RCT Business Club December Newsletter
It's almost time for Turkey and Tinsel, which means that here at the RCT Business Club, we are building up to our Fantastic Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony. We would like to wish all our members a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2008!
Here is our December edition of RCT Business Club E-Newsletter – enjoy!
Please feel free to send in anything that you think may be of interest for the next newsletter (January 2007) to businessclub@Rhondda-Cynon-Taf.gov.uk
Dates for your Diary
11th December 2007 - Networking lunch
Time: 12pm for 12.30pm start
Venue: The Three Saints Hotel, Llantrisant
Putting your networking skills to good use. RCT Business Club will be running a speednetworking event, to encourage business to talk about themselves and the services that their company's offer. This will provide you with an informal networking seesion, that increases your contacts. Come along and enjoy a buffet and chat to other members of the Club. More Info
Venue: University of Glamorgan Business Centre, Treforest
The RCT Business Club Gala Dinner & Awards Ceremony 2008 will be held on Friday 25th January 2008 with our very special guest speaker Gareth Edwards MBE. The RCT Business Club awards are now in their second year and continue to acknowledge outstanding achievement. The awards are open to any business operating within Rhondda Cynon Taf. If you would like to become involved by nominating yourself, your company or another company or just simply come along to network with colleagues, members and sponsors then click here to find out more.
To book a place at any of the RCT Business Club events, please contact Claire Curtis on 01443 424109, e-mail businessclub@rhondda-cynon-taff.gov.uk or register via the website at www.rctbusinessclub.co.uk
If you have any suggestion/comments about the events, please Contact us.
Club Membership
Introduce a member to the Club and get a free place at one of our breakfast events contact us if you would like to take up this offer.
RCT Business Club Welcomes our new members
- UGCS Ltd
- Workforce Training
- Answermyphone.biz
- Mobile PC Solutions
- Presstec Tooling
- School of Life
- Inter-Haul Pallet Services Limited
- Digital Systems UK Ltd
- Rhondda Leader
- The Upvc Store Ltd
- The Bertie Hotel
- M.A.W Catering Ltd
- Graffika
- nocardsthanks.com Ltd
Enjoy Members Offers
The RCT Business club members are pleased to offer: -
Enterprise House, Navigation Park, Abercynon CF45 4SN. Tel: 08704 027 027
Technology offers many opportunities as well as introducing new problems. What many people sometimes miss when they have an issue is that it could be the network that is failing or not up to the system demands. LightAge would like to offer all Business Club Members the opportunity to benefit from a free network health check. Our free offer will encompass a visual survey and an informal chat with whoever is responsible for your IT, to examine general network design, systems performance, cabling and security.
The GTi Suite, Valleys Innovation Centre, Navigation Park, Abercynon CF45 4SN.
Virtually Assist Ltd would like to offer all Business Club Members a special Christmas card promotion. From just £100, Virtually Assist will hand write and post 250 cards for you. Remember, when you send a card out early, it will stay on a desk all through December, as a constant reminder of you and your brand. All you have to do is contact Rebekah on 07989 774414.
For more information on the offers available to you please click here. Also if you are interested in offering a discount to other members, please Contact us.
Local News
Online Greetings Service Set to Transform Charitable Giving
For those people wanting to send greetings to friends and families this Christmas without the hassle of buying all those cards, a University of Glamorgan spin-out company has the solution.
www.nocardsthanks.com launched in November, and is a novel and environmentally-friendly way for anyone to give money to charity instead of sending greetings cards, whatever the occasion.
The process couldn’t be simpler. Anyone can register with www.nocardsthanks.com and select not to receive greetings cards for a variety of special occasions. Users then supply the site with a list of friends and family, who they want to receive greetings from. These people are then emailed and asked to send online customised greetings to the user and donate to a charity of their choice instead. The cost of each e card is £2.99 with £2 going straight to charity.
Louise Bright, founder of nocardsthanks.com said, "We really appreciated all the lovely cards we received after the birth of our daughter, but I wondered how the money spent on them could have been used by the Special Care Baby Unit where she was born. As a result we came up with the idea for nocardsthanks.com.
Sending a nocardsthanks.com e-card has many advantages – it gives a much bigger return to charities than traditional cards, it is environmentally friendly and is quicker and easier than writing traditional cards.
A number of charities have now signed up to the website including BLISS, the charity for premature babies. BLISS is using www.nocardsthanks.com to sell its corporate Christmas cards this year.
Catherine Cornish from BLISS commented, "It has been a pleasure working with Nocardsthanks. We were impressed with their can-do, proactive attitude. At every step they have been enthusiastic, accommodating and focused on getting the job done. I would have no hesitation in recommending Nocardsthanks, they deserve every future success."
www.nocardsthanks.com also provides businesses with a quick and easy way of sending corporate e-cards to their clients and contacts. At £75 for 100 e-cards with over £50 going to the users chosen charity, it is an affordable solution to the Christmas card dilemma.
The website for www.nocardsthanks.com has been developed by Bandog Media, a company run by University of Glamorgan graduates.
Useful Tips & Advice
LightAge offers the third in our series of useful tips and advice
Protection for your Business - Manage your passwords effectively
- Make sure that everyone in the business realises the importance of having a well-controlled security system. Last year there was some research, which revealed 70 per cent of employees, would offer up their password in return for a chocolate bar!
- Don’t allow staff to use other people’s passwords to log on. Change them regularly
- Don’t use pet names, birthdays, children’s names or anything easily guessed or information that others can obtain in the public domain
- Try to strike a balance between creating a password, which is not easily guessed, and creating one, which is not easily remembered! Getting it wrong and introducing overly complicated passwords can mean you needing to keep a record of it
- If you write it down keep it away from your computer and certainly not written down on a post-it stuck to the screen!
- Scale your security up as the business grows and according to your activities and to the nature of information stored. Take advice from professionals on how to do this. (More sophisticated alternatives/additions to passwords = innovations such as biometrics – fingerprint recognition, retina scans, or physical computer locks)
Protection for you personally
Keep your Christmas online shopping a safe experience:
- Make sure that any secure web sites you use have an 'S' after the http at the beginning of the site address (https://) they will also have a little gold padlock on the border of the page.
- Consider using PayPal or similar secure transaction merchants
- They are schemes you can sign up to such as Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode, which will add to you security online. UK payments association Apacs explains how to sign up to such schemes on their website http://www.shopsafeonline.org.uk/
- Always keep your Antivirus software up to date
- Use a different password for each site and if you find it difficult to manage, consider using a password manager such as Password Safe.
- Only HM Revenue & Customs should require your National Insurance number and only the DVLA may require your driving licence number so don’t give either of these to anyone else. Remember identity theft is on the increase.
- Provided you take reasonable precautions, online shopping is as secure as the high street
LightAge wish everyone in the RCT Business Club a safe and enjoyable festive break!
Rhondda Cynon Taf Business Club
Valleys Innovation Centre, Abercynon, CF45 4SN
T: (01443) 424109
E: businessclub@rhondda-cynon-taf.gov.uk
W: www.rctbusinessclub.co.uk
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