#cost-savings

#cost-savings

L ondon is expected to see the highest and lowest council tax increases in the country this year, analysis revealed on Tuesday.While Croydon residents will be hit by a record 15 per cent rise in bills, those in Tower Hamlets and Westminster will see their payments go up by just two per cent.The majority of Londoners face a five per cent hike in their council tax from April, as town halls seek to balance their books.

This blog aims to help Engineers, Engineering leaders, and Execs who want to coin a FinOps/ Cloud Economics practice facilitate their FinOps journey.You'll find the blueprint and roadmap of how we did this and cultivated a culture of cost awareness across engineering at a hypergrowth security startup with a small FinOps team and only six core objectives.

Mobile phone giant Vodafone's new boss has revealed plans to slash 11,000 jobs across the group over the next three years as she said the firm must change to address its poor performance.Margherita Della Valle, recently appointed Vodafone's group chief executive, said the cull comes as part of a plan to simplify the business.

Food prices have soared to a new record high as consumers continue to feel the pinch in the cost of living crisis, with ready meals and coffee becoming considerably more expensive.Overall shop inflation eased back slightly from record highs in April as spring discounts at fashion and furniture stores meant wider retail inflation slowed.

Shop price inflation eased back slightly from record highs last month despite another surge in food prices.Food prices soared 15.7%, the highest on record, in April to continue pressure on consumer finances, according to the latest BRC-NielsenIQ shop price index.However, spring discounting at fashion and furniture stores meant wider retail inflation slowed for the month.

I'll get straight to the point: "Submit" and "Click here" are ineffective calls to action (CTAs) for your email campaigns.(I'll explain why a few paragraphs down.)If you need help with CTA samples you can test, language models like ChatGPT or Google's Bard can be your best new copywriting tools.

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Freddie Liversidge will be speaking at AdExchanger's Programmatic IO conference on May 16-17 in Las Vegas.Click here to register.In 2016, a scandal rocked the advertising industry.A damning Association of National Advertisers (ANA) report revealed US ad agencies were pocketing profits through opaque practices like taking kickbacks from media companies and reselling media to clients at a markup.

The YouTube advertising company Channel Factory invited PwC to perform verification procedures over their proprietary platform ViewIQ, ensuring that it delivers efficiency to brands and agencies, and saves money as a result of quality ad placement.PwC's testing found Channel Factory's technology reduces media wastage by 23% leading to a 12% cost savings which is increasingly significant as a result of the economic downturn.

Driving relevance means driving growth.Join global brands and industry thought leaders at Brandweek, Sept. 11-14 in Miami, for actionable takeaways to better your marketing.50% off passes ends April 10.There is a cyclical trend within global marketing teams, vacillating from a centralized structure to one that is decentralized.

Disney+ Basic is now available in the U.S., and allows viewers to enjoy the amazing catalog of content on Disney+ with a lower priced, ad-supported subscription option in addition to the ad-free Disney+ Premium plan.As many who have worked on an ad-supported product know, delivering ads is not always simple, at least not with service flexibility and scale.

U.K. commercial broadcaster ITV 's annual results for 2022 were revealed Thursday and the picture is robust.Total group revenue was up 7% to £4.3 billion ($5.3 billion) and total external revenue was up 8% to £3.7 billion.ITV Studios total revenues grew 19% to £2 billion.The "Love Island" broadcaster said that the strong revenue growth and the adjusted interest, taxes, and amortization (EBITA) margin of 12.4% for ITV Studios was driven by a 58% increase in high-end scripted hours produced, with 19 formats sold in three or more countries.

London Underground drivers announce strike date for March (Image: PA) The London Underground is set to face further strike action in March as drivers vote to strike on the day of the Budget.The action is in a dispute over pension and working arrangements, which saw a vote in favour of industrial action by 99% of members of Aslef on a turnout out of 77% in a ballot.

A weekly round-up of London's rail transport news...
London Underground
Poppy roundels appear at London Tube stations as appeal kicks off Standard
A pair of new moving walkways opened at Bank tube station transforming the connection between the Northern and Central lines.ianVisits
Commuters at Westminster Tube station were given a surprise after the prime minister turned up to sell poppies.

Evorra, the simplest-to-use next-generation SaaS marketplace for brands and agencies, has reached another milestone with over 145 million compliant and addressable audiences going live on its platform this week."We have been working hand-in-hand with some of the world's largest brands and websites to build a next-generation audience platform that ensures only the consented and fully secure use of data," said Aaron Ritoper, co-founder and CEO of Evorra.

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: Alibaba offers Buy Now Pay Later to European customers; Musk's Twitter is believed to have intentionally broken third-party apps to the site; and Indian unicorn ShareChat culls its workforce against economic headwinds.Alibaba offers BNPL in Europe
E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding now offers its European customers the option to pay for products after receiving them.

More Britons will pay higher rates of tax after the autumn state as Jeremy Hunt announce he was freezing allowances for two further years and cutting the threshold for the 45p top rate.The chancellor said cutting the starting point for the top rate from earnings of 150,000 to 125,140 would see the wealthiest paying an extra 1,200 each year.

This should be the time when forward-thinking bosses can launch a takeover without having to fight a counterbid from a private equity firm, and hopefully end up paying a sensible price.And yet the shareholders of corporate buyers are punishing acquisitive ambition.What looks like an open goal is actually a trap.

We often think of  brand consolidation as a "big business" concern.Take for example the recent $13.7 billion takeover of Whole Foods by Amazon.Should Amazon put its imprint on Whole Foods outlets?But branding issues play out even more frequently with small and medium enterprises.One medical practice takes over or merges with another, one manufacturer acquires another producer, or an accounting firm wants to rebrand itself for a fresh start.

Clinical trials are critical in developing and approving new medical treatments and technologies.These trials generate massive data that needs to be managed efficiently and accurately to ensure patient safety and successful research outcomes.The good news is that advances in AI and automation technology, such as AI-based data extraction, virtual clinical trials, and predictive analytics, are making it easier for clinical trial managers to streamline their clinical trial Data Management processes and gain insights that can help improve patient outcomes.

Qatar is going to host another World Cup, adding basketball to the sports portfolio of a tiny country with long-term Olympic hosting ambitions.The International Basketball Federation picked Qatar to host the 2027 edition of its marquee men's World Cup on Friday.There was no vote between competing bids.

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) and 42 affiliated state banking associations are calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to approve language that allows community banks to test out different consumer construction and construction-to-permanent loan disclosures, which the group describes as "a core offering of community banks in many local communities."

Lender and appraisal management companies and other property data collection companies can now use Black Knight 's Scout mobile property inspection as part of the value acceptance plus property data process.With the cloud-based Scout app, users can easily collect detailed interior and exterior property data using a mobile device, Black Knight said Tuesday.

California-based lender Guild Mortgage posted a higher profit in 2022 thanks to its increased purchase mortgage market share - and now has its eyes set on acquiring other lenders.Guild, the purchase-focused lender with a distributed retail model, posted a net income of $328 million in 2022 despite posting a loss of $15 million in the fourth quarter of the year.

75% off books for two days each month!?-Jeneeliya Jayakumar-Parmiter's School (Image: Jeneeliya Jayakumar) A friend recommended this book store a few months ago.Apparently, the books were over half the price off, and so, on the required days, I went to see whether this place was as good as it had been mentioned in passing.

It is death by gangrene.No government seems to have the guts to kill HS2, Britain's biggest and craziest infrastructure project, so each merely lops off another limb.In 2021, it was Leeds.Now the opening of the Birmingham-to-Manchester and Acton-to-Euston lines has been delayed.HS2 to be delayed by two more years due to soaring costs This railway is a southern project on which the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is blowing a staggering 100m a week or 5bn a year.

The parent company of Corcoran, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Sotheby's International Realty net loss
The parent company of Corcoran, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Sotheby's International Realty net loss
Anywhere Real Estate finished the fourth quarter with a net loss of $453 million as executives theorized the slowed housing market may be near its bottom.

Metro newspapers at Farringdon station.Picture: Press Gazette
At least 995 jobs at English-speaking news media businesses have been cut or put at risk in January 2023.The job losses accelerate a trend that began in the second half of 2022, when media companies cut more than 1,000 editorial roles across four months.

There's been a lot of talk about semantic layers lately.I've seen dozens of companies using a semantic layer to drive self-service analytics at scale.But even with all these success stories, I still get this question: "Is a semantic layer worth the effort?"In other words, is the juice worth the squeeze?

HP is the latest tech company to announce extensive layoffs.Following a surge in demand for computing products amid pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions, the computer vendor is readjusting as consumer demand for laptops and desktops falls.In its Q4 and fiscal 2022 results shared Tuesday, HP announced that it will eliminate 4,000 to 6,000 jobs by the end of fiscal 2025.