Percentage of people receiving very low wages up by 43% since 1995 7. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot The Institut Arbeit und Qualifikation (IAQ) at the Duisburg-Essen University complains about the fact that the percentage of people working for minimum wages has increased by about 43% since 1995. 6.5 million people (22% of all employees) had worked for too little money in the year 2006. This was revealed in the course of studies …
First reader survey launched in the MittelstandsWiki 6. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot The MittelstandsBlog came into existence in October 2005. After the MittelstandsWiki had started in September 2006, the number of our visitors more than quintupled over a period of a few months. In January 2008 alone the MittelstandsWiki and its journals attracted about 75.000 readers. We, the editorial team, would now like to get to know …
Email becoming more and more popular 6. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot Emails are becoming increasingly popular with customers and are already as important as dealing with customer requests by telephone. This finding was discovered in the course of the “Multichannel-Management” study by the novomind software company. The above-mentioned two communication channels receive school marks 2.1 and 1.9 by customers. Companies, on the other hand, appreciate email …
IT security not receiving adequate attention 6. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot Half of all German enterprises do not invest sufficient time in order to secure their in-house IT systems. Quite often there is no comprehensive IT security strategy for the entire company. Furthermore, many investments in this respect are ineffective given that individual measures are not consistent so that security loopholes arise. These findings were the …
SMEs are insufficiently prepared for EU payment transfers 5. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot On January 28th the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) was launched. Almost fifty percent of companies in Germany, however, hardly know about the effects of SEPA, e.g. reduced costs due to facilitation of direct debit and money transfer procedures. In particular small businesses with an annual turnover of up to two million Euros know little …
2008 will be a year of acquisitions in the IT sector 5. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot The Software-Initiative Deutschland (SID) predicts massive acquisitions for the year 2008 among major enterprises in the IT sector, in particular by software giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. The reasons for this are said to be rapidly increased turnover and fierce competition.
Consumer prices up by 2.7% in January 4. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot According to estimates by the Federal Statistical Office consumer prices in Germany increased by on average 2.7% in January this year as compared to January 2007. In comparison to December 2007 prices presumably slightly fell by on average -0.3% in January this year.
Lower costs for European patents 3. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot In future patents will be significantly less expensive in Europe given that costs for translations are going to fall. France deposited in Berlin the ratification certificate for the so-called London Protocol. According to this agreement dating from the year 2000 signatory countries agree that patents granted by the European Patent Office in Munich need not …
Employment keeps growing 3. February 2008 by Thomas Jannot According to preliminary calculations by the Federal Statistical Office, the number of employed people in December 2007 surpassed that of December 2006 by 596.000 people or 1.5%. As compared to November 2007, it fell by just 139.000 which is less than is usual the case due to seasonal factors. In December 2007 there were 40.15 …
FED once more lowers key interest rate to 3.00 percent 31. January 2008 by Thomas Jannot As was expected the US Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) today in the course of its rotational meeting lowered the US key interest rate by another 50 basis points to 3.00%. Thus, the current rate is as low as it was for the last time in the middle of the year 2005. This latest lowering was …