Brochure copywriting - BT
In selling various services to businesses, and - as here - public sector organisations, BT makes extensive use of case-studies.
Generally, these are based on half-hour telephone interviews with those directly involved.
The results tend to be interesting, enlightening and highly persuasive to those in a similar situation.
EDI - bringing costs down to earth
Northumberland Contracting - 2,200 people in a Directorate made up of five operational divisions.
'The five are Highways, both maintenance and improvement works; Transport, including the provision and maintenance of vehicles;
Catering, school meals and civic catering; Building Cleaning; and Grounds Maintenance.
A sixth division, Contract Support, provides administrative, personnel and financial back-up.
Says Director of Commercial Services, David Maxted: 'We buy everything from baked beans to tyres, from soap to truckloads of asphalt.'
The initial impetus to use EDI came from two directions: financial and technical. 'We take a look at our costs every year, and every year we'd been asking ourselves the same basic question: why is everything so expensive? Why is it costing us so much to do these basic activities - in terms of both labour and computer costs? Then Mike Smith, our Senior Purchasing Officer, and David Malthouse, who handles Systems Management, came up with the same idea at the same time: EDI.'
We started out by identifying the biggest areas for orders and invoices - which were the Highways Division, followed by Transport. Highways has the highest turnover at around £12million a year, and probably the highest number of orders, around 10,000. Transport spends around £5million a year, and involves loads of little bitty one-off orders, for spare parts and the like. So they seemed the obvious first targets.'
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