< PreviousROUND TABLEEast Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk20something around 25,000 sq ft in Nottingham city centre. Weneed to bring our team together under one roof, as we've justcompleted the sub-letting on the office we used to occupy inWilford.Jonathon Seddon:I think we've ended up with the marketwe've deserved. If developers could make money out of officebuildings they would, but the student sector has taken thestock away.James Keeton:What we're seeing locally is that most of thedeals are being done by Propcos - they're not investors.However, what we're seeing is places like Oxford andNottingham which will be the next target for investors' funds.However, if developer built a 60-70,000 sq ft office then they'dfill it - the demand is there.Kelly:If we accept that the market has to move to studentaccommodation, then we have to ask: where does this peakout? In the long term, we'll have a huge problem.Keeton:Students are good for the city centre, though. Theyuse the shops and restaurants and therefore create jobs.Seddon:Because rents are so low and building costs arerelatively hig, it's become a real problem for developers tomake money and this is creating its own problems.Philip Glenn: The Kaplan development on the old cinemasite was considered as an office development, but the figuresdidn't stack up. Student accommodation has certainly moppedup a lot of Grade C office stock in the city.Seddon:If the student market wasn't there there'd havebeen wrecking balls moving in all over the city. What'shappened is that obsolete buildings have been given another30-40 years of life. There's not any more land left to developon in the city centre, so where are these new office buildingsgoing to go?Amy Morley: I think what we can agree on, however, is thatNottingham has some Grade A infrastructure, what with thenew tram lines.Mackinlay:We've had to take this into account. We don'twant to move offices and lose our staff, because at themoment we're very handily situated on the new tram line.Asano: We had to move as we realised that candidatesdidn't want to come all the way into town and then have to goall the way out again.McPake: A great relocation can give everyone a boost. Geteveryone on board and they'll feel motivated and cometogether.Asano:One of the biggest problems we had when we wereat Beeston was the first impression our old offices gave off.We definitely needed an upgrade.Glenn: The lead time for moving in is around 18 months totwo years. The problem is that, historically, no-one has beenbuilding speculatively in Nottingham. We've never thosesignificant requirements.Seddon: If someone built a 60-70,000 sq ft office schemethey would fill it - but what next? Unity Square isn't comingout of the ground, despite the grand announcement at MIPIMa couple of years ago. Unity Square will only work once theBroadmarsh has finished anyway - and that's turning intowww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 21another damp squib for Nottingham. The city has rested on its retail laurelsfor a long time now, and until we get the mix right, then the big occupierswon't come.Kelly:It seems to me that the opportunity for inward investment into thecity doesn't exist, and yet there are significant requirements out there thatare going begging. Leicester and Derby have really upped their game in thisarea, and I've been very impressed with John Forkin and Peter Soulsby.Are initiatives such as the Creative Quarter helping to provide spacefor fast-growing businesses?Seddon:I've done a series of deals in the Creative Quarter, but in mayways it's a little like the Emperor's New Clothes. There aren't a lot of creativeindustries in the Creative Quarter. There's certainly demand there, but not alot has changed. The Creative Quarter was launched to a big fanfare, but it'sstill essentially an investment fund. It's a very thin veneer.Kelly:It appears to me to be an reinvention of the cottage industryeconomy. There are some very strong SME businesses there, certainly.McPake:I think the Creative Quarter provides contrast - it seems a worldaway from the professional services quarter, for sure.What do landlords have to do to ensure their office space is rentedout?McPake: Our new premises look very different. What we wanted from ourlandlord is something we could create ourselves, and it's worked. Our teamare now energised and we've had a very positive response.Are we going to see any speculative development in Nottinghamover the next two years?Seddon:Yes, but it'll be limited, and not on a wide scale.Keeton:I think we'll see between 15-70,000 sq ft developed.Glenn: Any speculative development will be limited, because of the lackof potential sites.Keeton: The funds are so heavy that they weight they hold will bringsome development forward, I believe. There is a lot of confidence - andmoney - out there.ROUND TABLEwww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 21ROUND TABLEEast Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk22SKILLS -blockingthe braindrainHow can we ensure that East Midlands SMEs attract thebest graduates from the region? Our latest round table,sponsored by Cherry Professional tackled one of the biggestchallenges facing the region's economy.Is the brain drain a real thing, orhas it always been the case thatstudents have left the East Midlandsupon graduating?David Eade: I think it's always beenthe case. The two universities inNottingham attract huge numbers ofstudents to the area, and applicationsare higher than they've ever been.However, it does often seem that thecountry slopes downhill to London.Katrina Woodward: What we need isa joined-up fund to try and addressskills across the East Midlands, and tounderstand what problems there are.Employees want things to be simplified,and we're very good at promoting bigbusinesses to graduates, but 96 percent of businesses in the East Midlandsare SMEs - we need to shout about thecareers opportunities they provide too.Ian Naylor: It's often more luck thanjudgement finding graduate schemesyou can tap into. Money is sometimesavailable for such a short period of time.Geoff Love: SMEs have to reactquicker. By the time they start lookingfor graduates, they've often beensnapped up. We pay £16,000 for anundergraduate on a placement year,and we've got a 100 per cent hit rate -they've all come back.Martin Johnson: It's taken us fouryears to get where we are now as far astaking graduates and apprentices on isconcerned. I think you can expectgraduates to stick around for five years.We pay £20,000 a year for first yeargraduates, by the way.Eade: What's become clear is that youguys know how to do this!Johnson: I think it's just about gettingyour name out there - you can findyourself up against some pretty bigcompetition.James Pinchbeck: I think there needsto be a recognition that there is adifference between further educationand higher education. FE is all aboudeveloping and upskilling people whowill work locally, where as HE doesn'thave that mantra. How many highlyqualified Cambridge graduates stay inCambridge, for example?Johnson: SMEs should making apoint of saying to graduates that if theycome and work for them then they canROUND TABLEwww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 23make an immediate impact. They will be"somebody", rather than if they go to,for example, Boots or Rolls-Roycewhere they'll only be a number.Eade: The problem lies in the fact thatmost students don't know what theproposal is from SMEs. How do theyfind out what an SME can offer them?Pinchbeck: One of the main barriersis the fact that most SMEs don't have anHR department; they're too busyrunning their businesses. However,SMEs can offer true career progressionto graduates.Danielle Asano: What we've noticedis that young people are asking moreabout career progression than everbefore - certainly during my time in therecruitment industry.Martin Burnett: I think that if you'reracking up debts of £55,000 then youneed to know what's on offer a few yearsdown the line.Pinchbeck: I think we need to belooking a little earlier than further orhigher education, and down to secondaryor even primary level. Often the primaryschool children are told: "The jobs you'llend in haven't even been invented yet".What sort of message does that sendout?Woodward: There's more competitionfor graduates now then there's ever been.It can be confusing for both parties, but Ithink it's important that we don't slip intoa culture of blame. We need to try andjoin all the different strands together intoone coherent offer.Panel:Geoff Love, EsendexJames Pinchbeck,Streets CharteredAccountantsMartin Johnson, GreenTweedIan Naylor, App InstituteKatrina Woodward, D2N2LEPDavid Eade, NottinghamTrent UniversityDanielle Asano, CherryProfessionalMartin Burnett, CherryProfessionalPRODUCTIVITYEast Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk24Productivity:A workforce or management problemor a combination of the two?by James Pinchbeck, marketing partner, Streets Chartered AccountantsThe Bank of England Inflation Report in May,included a downgrading in their forecast forproductivity, the output for man hours for the UKEconomy. The UK has perhaps shamefully fallen wellbehind its peers in terms of productivity. Even prior tothe financial crisis productivity lagged behind ourcounterparts; a situation which rather than improve inmore recent times as we experience recovery hasactually deteriorated, with productivity levels now16% lower than it would have been if the pre-recession trend had continued. The Bank ofEngland’s view of our productivity going forwarddoes not look any better; in fact their inflation reportreveals that the forecast for productivity has beenrevised downward again.Why then are we deemed to be less productive andwhy is it becoming more of a trend?There are a number of reasons which include thegrowing number of what might be termeduneconomical even ‘zombie’ businesses, whichsurvive merely because they service debt or justmake enough. Such businesses have come aboutthrough a combination of low interest rates, theabsence of a sharp up-turn in the economy and thegeneral tendency by the financial institutions not to beoverbearing but more supportive towards strugglingbusiness.We have seen a growing proportion of lower skilledemployers in the workforce, which has had a negativeeffect on output and as such workers tend to be lessproductiveSince 2008 spending and activity focused aroundworkforce and skills development has been subject tocuts by many businesses. The impact of a significantlack of investment in workforce development over aprolonged period of time is now beginning to show,with lower rates of productivity and economic output.Equally the general trend has been to reduce and insome cases not make investment in aspects ofproduction and business process, especially intechnology and ICT. The effect is seen in out of dateand increasingly slow working practices and reducedproductivity.In terms of the workforce, it seems that there aremany businesses who’s poor recruitment, selectionand in house training and development has givenrise to a less than effective workforce; a situationfurther compounded by role ambiguity betweenwhat the employer wants from their workers and viceversa. It is also increasingly the case that whilst manybusinesses face new and changing customerdemands their working practices and businessprocesses have not changed to reflect this. In somecases, given relatively long periods of no or very lowlevels of pay awards, little investment in the businessand a lack of vision for the future, workers are feelingless valued and consequently less motivated.Whilst many businesses have looked to reduceoperating costs to maintain or enhance operatingmargins, many have also experienced creepingincreases in overheads, whether it is the increase ofcost replacing like for like kit and new machinery orjust simply to meet new rafts of compliance.It could also be said, with generally benign tradingconditions, many businesses either don’t have thedesire, vision or skills to improve their businessproductivity. Equally such businesses tend to fail toattract the more skilled more demanding employeesthat are looking for employment. It is more likely thannot such businesses are prone to loss of its moreskilled, valuable and productive staff to thosebusinesses that have more drive, flair and providefor skills and workforce development.We can see then, that there is no single answer tothe UK’s lack of productivity. However, that apartthere must be more that business leaders andmanagers can do to improve productivity. BUSINESS PLANwww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 25EastMidlandsPropertyMarket“VibrantAgain”The property market is vibrant once more –and that’s partly down to the election. TimGarratt, MD of Innes England, explains why.We have never had it so good?Whoooa! Hang on. Not quite – but therewas a huge amount of relief after theelection results, but in a non-political way.I think the concern about what might havehappened and the uncertainty around itwas unhelpful in the run up to the election.But once it was done, the marketreacted and it reacted well. The marketdoesn’t like change. The generalconsensus is that money remains cheapand plentiful and we are seeing the bankslending more and relaxing some of theirlending enquiries.At Innes England, we can say we aredoing more valuations than we have beendoing in a while. We are 50% up on lastyear which is a sure sign that themarketing is improving. We are definitelygetting more enquiries and interestinglywe are getting enquiries on property whichwas sticking for a while. And this has beendefinitely the case since the election.When we were stuck in the mud, therewas a lack of stock which made mattersworse, but I’m glad to say that the marketis definitely back on the move. Deals seemto be easier to do that they have for awhile and we are seeing more and morepeople entering the market which is greatnews.The professional side of the business isincreasing as well. Our building surveyorsare seeing an uptake in enquiries andtangible projects which are truly getting offthe ground. And we are seeing many moreprojects coming forward.Retail in the cities is improving – andprobably much more than we anticipated.There are several instances recently wherewe have acted for occupiers recently andgot into best bids. That’s quite something –when you think that it was only a couple ofyears ago that Grimsey sounded the deathknell on the UK high street. The highstreets are starting to fill, and yes much ofthat are cafes and eateries, but it’s positivenews for Nottingham.From the independents point of view,there is more going on. Independentretailers have the confidence to seizeopportunities and literally set up theirstalls. Undoubtedly, people are feelingbetter about the world – and whether that’ssetting up a business, or spending money,it can certainly be felt in the city centres.The office market perhaps is thestumbling block in the property world. It’sstill very difficult. I think that this becauseopportunities are limited. I think peopleare starting to look how they are workingtoo. We will see more changes over thenext couple of years on mobile working. Iknow we agents have been saying it for awhile, but changes in the ways of workingwill really start to happen now.It’s technology which will support that.Previously the technology perhaps hasn’tbeen there to allow people to work fromhome or do hot desking. But now, withthe advent of 365 and cloud, you canwork pretty much anywhere.I can sit in my favourite Costa, work,use the cloud – and hardly need to be inthe office at all. And this is something weat Innes England have been realising.We’re looking to move offices in Derbyand although the team is larger and weare busier, we will be looking for lessspace. And that’s because we will ‘agileworking’, using technology to the max –and cutting down on paper. I predict wewill all be working like this in the future.Watch this space…PROPERTYEast Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk26ITwww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 27Mobile app development:I looked - you’redoing it wrongIt seems forever ago since we got that first iPhone in our hands, says Sean Price, owner of iBox-Security, but in reality it was June 2007, eight years ago...The first iPhone came out withoutthe app store - it was web appsonly, something which raised alot of concern for the developersof the world.A year later in 2008 the secondgeneration iPhone was releasedcomplete with the app store -available to everyone anddevelopers were happy. The onlyproblem is most iPhonedevelopers pretty much stoppedthere. With the exception of runaway hits from the likes of Kingand the Candy Crush Sagagames - there haven’t been thatmany real apps of significancefrom developers particularly inthe business world.I won’t lie, we build iPhone andiPad apps for clients, have werevolutionised any businesses - that's probably a stretchbut what we have done is provided enormous value totheir companies through doing so. The problem stemsfrom the fact that many businesses don’t know whatthey want, they claim every year its ‘the year of the app’- this simply isn’t the case. It's like proclaiming its theyear of the car...We have analysed a number of apps produced bycompanies in the East Midlands, found some to besuffering the same issues Moonpig went through -leaking millions of credit card numbers, some arewebsites sat in an app frame and the list goes on. Whatneeds to happen is developers need to work closer tobusinesses and realise its not about using a dummy appthey have built before and simply repurposing it for thenext client in just a few short hours.It's about adding value to the clientsbusiness, adding revenue streamsor simplifying processes to lead tomore productive environments -not overcomplicating systems orcreating apps that deliver no morevalue than a website would.You don’t need an app - when awebsite will suffice - an app mayrun into the thousands of pounds tocreate and thats just for oneplatform, maybe you have users onAndroid or Windows (who knows)and these are all separate apps, youshouldn’t be trying to squeeze thesame app into different phones ortablets expecting it to run and besomething your customers or userswould enjoy.The year of the app came and wentin 2008, the marketing is wrong and the thoughtprocess is wrong. We actively promote the fact that appdevelopment is a long term process, its not going to bedone in a few months nor should it be thought of as areplacement for a website. The real facts are yourbusiness may very well need an app but probably notfor the reasons you can think of - perhaps its your staffthat need it and not your customers.Perhaps that development shop that told you an app todisplay your restaurants menu is a great idea simplywant to increase billables and don’t care about yourbusiness.Take it from me, the year of the app is irrelevant - yourbusiness is what's important, regardless which device,screen size or type of customer you deal with.SOCIAL SCENEEast Midlands Business Link www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk28NottinghamCityBusinessClubThe Bank of England’s agent for the East Midlands, AlastairCunningham, was guest speaker at the Nottingham City BusinessClub’s recent event.Nic Elliott, president of the Nottingham City Business Club, said:“Alastair gave a brilliant, highly-informative speech fresh fromhosting Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, at LincolnCathedral the previous evening and we thank him as well as allour members and guests for joining us at the lunch.”SOCIAL SCENEwww.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk East Midlands Business Link 29Next >