magazine
businessinfomag.uk
38
Month in Numbers
The cost of commuting continues to go up.
According to Regus, the average proportion
of salary spent on commuting now stands
at 4%, up from 3% in 2010. Nearly a third
of workers questioned by the workplace
provider spend more than 5% of their
salary on commuting. For 11%, travelling
to and from work consumes £1 or more in
every £10 earned.
The number of independent professionals
in the UK has hit 1.88 million, a jump of
35% since 2008, according to research
conducted by Kingston University for
IPSE, the Association of Independent
Professionals and the Self Employed.
Women now make up 41.2% of skilled
professionals who choose to work
independently on a contract-by-contract
basis.
Global courier ParcelHero estimates that
12% of parcel deliveries are unsuccessful,
either being delivered at the wrong time
or being ‘carded’ and requiring a second
delivery attempt or customer pick-up
from a parcel depot. Though collection
points are increasingly popular, ParcelHero
says the ideal solution are customer-
operated 24-hour parcel lockers.
A third of British workers failed to take
their annual holiday allowance last
year, according to a YouGov survey
commissioned by business information
services companyWolters Kluwer.
Reasons given include a heavy workload
and concern about what an employer
might think about taking time off work.
A study by LogMeIn and Ovum
highlights the need for businesses to
tailor their customer service to customer
needs. More than four out of five
consumers (84%) say they have stopped
doing business with a brand due to bad
customer service. The time it takes to
get through to an agent is the biggest
customer complaint, cited by 65% of
consumers.
The word ‘trust’ was used 317 times
in the annual reports of FTSE 100
companies last year, up from just 38
appearances in 2005, according to a
study by the Chartered Institute of
Management Accountants (CIMA). Robert
Phillips, author of
Trust Me, PR is Dead
,
said the word ‘trust’ has been “used and
abused to the point of exhaustion”.
Headline findings from
the latest technology and
workplace research
The Month in Numbers
The cost of data breaches is increasing, warns
Ponemon Institute. Its annual
Cost of Data
Breach Study: Global Analysis
found that the
average cost incurred for each lost or stolen
record containing sensitive and confidential
information has gone up by 6% from $145
to $154.
Last year, 90% of large organisations and
74% of small and medium-sized businesses
suffered an information security breach.
The
Information Security Breaches Survey 2015
from the Government and PwC says the
average cost of the most severe breaches has
risen to between £1.46 million and £3.14
million for companies with more than 500
employees and to between £75,000 and
£310,800 for SMEs.
Criminals who invest in malware schemes
can expect a return on investment of
1,425%. Based on data from 574 data breach
investigations, the
2015 Trustwave Global
Security Report
has worked out that a $5,900
investment in exploit kit and ransomware
schemes will generate income of $84,100.
The top two vulnerabilities exploited by
cyber-criminals are poor remote access
security and weak passwords.
Driven by the rapid digitisation of consumers’
lives and enterprise records, Juniper Research
expects the cost of data breaches to
quadruple to $2.1 trillion globally by 2019,
almost four times the estimated cost of
breaches in 2015.
The Future of Cybercrime
& Security: Financial & Corporate Threats
& Mitigation
also highlights the increasing
professionalism of cybercrime.
The smartwatch
market is predicted
to grow from 3.6 million
unit shipments in 2014 to 101 million
shipments in 2020, according to a report
from IHS. Apple’s share of the market
is predicted to fall to 38% in 2020, as
other smartwatch makers address the
vast Android smartphone market.
More than four out of 10 (42%) SME
owners and decision-makers rely on ‘feel’
rather than data and analytics for an
understanding of their customers. In a
YouGov survey for First Data Merchant
Solutions, 23% said that customer
relationships would improve if their
company spent more time gathering
detailed customer feedback.
The annual income people say they
would like to have in retirement has risen
from £35,000 to £42,000, according
to Aegon’s latest
UK Readiness Report
.
The life insurance and pensions provider
warns that to generate such an income
you would need a savings pot of more
than £1,000,000.
Mobile data traffic is predicted to reach
almost 197,000 petabytes (PB) by 2019.
This, says Juniper Research, is equivalent
to more than 10 billion Blu-ray movies.
154
4
1.88 million
101 million
12
33
42,000
197,000
84
42
317
Security breaches
90
1,425
2.1 trillion
Worldpay,
the payment
processing
company, has
processed
over £2 billion
of contactless
payments
since January
2012
