Company Spotlight: Creamer & Sundt

Creamer & Sundt is a bespoke management consultancy based in London and Glasgow. Alistair Creamer is described as “a catalyst, a creative and a bridge-builder”, and Anna Sundt as “a business psychologist, facilitator and artist”.

In their own words, they work with businesses to “bring about change by using the arts to engage people, inspire better ways of working and accelerate learning and development”. They talk about taking art out of the everyday and putting it into the hearts of the organisations they work with.

Creamer & Sundt's clients are varied and come from across multiple sectors, including Unilever, Film London, Buttle UK and Chichester Festival Theatre. Their inspirations, listed on their website, come from far and wide, spanning the full breadth of the creative arts.

They focus on three main areas:

• Connecting – finding your purpose and communication.
• Creating – innovation and culture change.
• Acceleration – team and leadership development.

Connect

Creamer & Sundt apply the mindset of an artist to their ideas about communication. This means bringing your message to life through a mixture of storytelling, visuals and video.

• Focus on communication within your organisation – people want to feel good about company goals, how they are contributing to the company's success and how the company is performing.
• People need to know “why” - what is the purpose behind your business?

“People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it” - Simon Sinek

Create

The belief that everyone is creative and that companies are more successful when people are creative at work is a core element of their approach to business. They bring this creative approach into businesses in two ways: innovation and culture change.

• When people come to them with a specific challenge, they try to play it back to them and disrupt their thinking, creating the space and environment for them to see that challenge in a fresh way.
• They also have a passion for working brands that are serious about culture – these projects are a long-term investment in people.
• Engaged employees are the best employees; people really living the values are the ones who deliver.

“If you are going to evolve, to survive and thrive, then you too will need to think more creatively. And you'll need to do it faster, too” ― Nick Souter, 'Breakthrough Thinking'

Accelerate

From strategy conferences in Amsterdam to team-building days in Soho, Creamer & Sundt consider their team events to be their signature work.

• They aim to help you get the most out of your budget and time together, pushing the envelope of what can be achieved “off-site” to pull off some truly invigorating team events.
• Creativity is a key quality in modern leadership.
• Creamer & Sundt's leadership programmes are “a journey of discovery” - they work through challenges, design unique learning sessions, and coach both teams and individuals.

“Change will never be this slow again” ― Mark Holden, PHD Media Worldwide

Watch this space for an exclusive interview with director Alistair Creamer.

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10 Innovative Apps for Business People

In the modern world, being able to conduct business on-the-go, from your mobile phone or tablet can save valuable time. Take a look at our top picks for innovative apps that will help revitalise and transform the way in which you conduct business.

1. Wolfram Alpha. For easy access to data and data analysis – learn about almost anything, quickly and efficiently. The app is a mobile version of the computational knowledge engine and can be used to look at anything from mathematics to chemistry to data input.

2. TheStreet. Great for financial news. The Street began as an online informational website but has since rolled out apps for Android and iPhone users. The app provides users with access to up-to-date market/financial news, analysis and stock-picking insights from analysts. Aggregating information to provide a multimedia experience with data, articles and videos, the app also gives detailed quotes and analyses of stock.

3. ItSeez3d. For artists, architects and engineers looking to making a great impression with a dynamic, innovative presentation to a client. This app turns your iPad into a mobile 3D scanner. Users can view scans as rotatable 3D figures, upload them to a website which supports 3D model sharing or email them to an organisation which converts them to 3D printable format.

4. Expensify. For creating and distributing expense reports easily and quickly. The app’s intelligent automation helps users to handle their expenses in real time with one click. SmartScan a receipt, and Expensify will code and report the expense for you, before auto-submitting it for approval. The app’s rapid reimbursement system delivers the money back to the employee’s bank account by the end of the day.

5. Square Register. For those with small businesses who want to be able to manage transactions from anywhere. Launched in 2010, Square Register allows you to accept credit cards with a free card reader and free point of sale tools. The funds from swiped payments are deposited into your bank account within 1-2 business days. The app takes a 2.75% cut for all major credit cards with no merchant accounts or hidden fees.

6. Sign Easy. To save time and sign documents on-the-go, safely and legally. Users can import documents from email or the cloud, then sign and fill them in minutes. Then simply email the completed documents or save them back to the cloud. The app works with a multitude of file formats, including PDF, Word, Excel and JPEG.

7. Proven Hiring. For small business owners who want a quick and easy way to find suitable candidates. This is the first app to support job post distribution to all major job boards. You can import existing job descriptions from the Proven website, your email or Dropbox. The app also provides job description templates to get you started.

8. Card Munch. A useful tool for networking, saving space and decluttering. This free app, owned by LinkedIn, turns your business cards into LinkedIn Connections simply by taking a photo. The app has seen well over 1.8 million business cards scanned so far.

9. Own It. For small business owners looking to grow their networks. Own It is a trusted network of small business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs with the goal of supporting each other in growing their businesses.

10. MarketWatch. Provides access to the latest business news, financial data and market information. Users can receive breaking news coverage, market data and market alerts. Recent updates include broader market coverage with interactive graphs that allow you to filter across a variety of date ranges.

Click here to see our membership packages or here to subscribe to our mailing list. Leave a comment below to let us know your favourite apps for business, marketing and finance.

Our next event is today at TateHindle. We hope to see you there!

Never Stop Learning About Your Customers

Your customers should be at the heart of everything you do; put them first and the rest should follow. They can be both your greatest advocate and your greatest critic, so it's important to keep track of who they are and what they want from you.

Generally speaking, customers are often far less loyal and trusting than they used to be, especially in industries which suffered reputational blows during the financial crisis. Even in unrelated industries, you're probably feeling some of the same effect. At the same time, customers also have more power than ever before, due to the rise of social media, online comparison shopping and a greater proliferation of choices.

The diversity of those customers continues to increase, which puts a premium on mirco-segmentation and deep customer insight. However, by increasing the noise-to-data ratio, the data deluge resulting from the internet can actually make it harder to see and understand your customer base.

Economic uncertainty and data overload confuses customers as well as businesses. This makes them less interested in products than in flexible, adaptive solutions, creating customers who are trickier and more demanding than ever. Therefore, it's more important than ever to really get inside the heads of your customers and try to stand in their shoes.

Five Ways to Really Understand Your Customers and Know What They Want

1. Field diverse customer services teams. Diverse staff are more likely to be able to understand and communicate effectively with a diverse range of customers.

2. Understand partnerships. Most business, especially digital ones, are only successful these days if they are able to build strong partnerships. Being aware of the various important players and their roles can help illuminate the specific nuances of an industry. This can also provide good opportunities for disruption and potential cost savings if a vendor or provider can be removed from the equation.

3. Use social media. Having social media accounts is a must in modern business practices, allowing you to interact with customers and track their preferences/habits/activity. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide a wide range of insights into current and potential customers, including their buying habits.

4. Use big data sources and leverage that data to obtain critical insights into your customer base. Make sure you focus on the quality of the data, rather than the quantity but at the same time, use every bit of data you can collect from as many sources as possible. Also, remember that your business operates in real time so your analytics should as well. This allows you to understand what's happening as it's happening and to take appropriate actions to ensure optimal user experience and obtain the best results for your business.

5.Anticipate what your customers will want tomorrow, a strategy which has served many entrepreneurs well, such as Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. Use different tools, such as scenario planning to explore how underlying market shifts may affect your customers in the future.

Smart Scenarios

Good scenarios provide competing intellectual windows onto a complex phenomenon and challenge how you think about it. The aim is to test your current strategy and to make sure that your plans include enough flexibility that you can weather whatever the future brings. For example, if automakers in the US had examined various globalisation and technology scenarios a few decades earlier, then they might have switched their design and manufacturing strategies much sooner, shoring up and protecting the industry.

Start by defining the issue – look at it in terms of time frame, scope and decision variables. Then, make a list of what you already know. Ask which current trends will affect your industry in the future, then document these trends and explain why each exerts a significant, lasting influence. Follow up by identifying what you don't know – this means potential uncertainties which could affect your business in the future. Briefly explain why and how each point matters, and how they may be interconnected.

In response to this knowledge, construct multiple scenarios with different outcomes for each uncertainty. Identify how and where each of your scenarios may be inconsistent and eliminate combinations which seem implausible. You should end up with a few diverse but plausible scenarios which cover a wide range of the possibilities your business may face.

Top Tips

1. Identify your knowledge gaps and how best to fill them. This will provide direction and help you to set measurable goals to track your progress.

2. Keep asking whether you're doing the right thing by your customers. If you are, that should mean you're also doing the right thing for your brand, business and team, too.

3. Don't be complacent. Keep learning, doing more and finding ways to improve as a brand, team and individual.

4. Never assume you know what your customer wants or needs. Stay objective and allow the data to provide insight.

Click here to see our membership packages or here to subscribe to our mailing list. Leave a comment below to let us know how you keep up to date with your customer knowledge.

Our next event will be at TateHindle on 12th October. We hope to see you there!