Billion pound challenge

The ASK Group and ToLocalise are pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached today to join forces.  ASK Translation, a major UK player in the language services market, will be integrating the ToLocalise brand into their market leading ASK Translation brand.

Gary Keens, Managing Director of The ASK Group, said “We are absolutely delighted to have reached an agreement with Duncan Brown of ToLocalise.  ASK is already one of Europe’s leading translation companies, working to ISO 9001 and BSEN1538 standards, which can only be strengthened by this deal. Duncan and I have known each other for over 3 years and ASK and ToLocalise already had a great deal of synergy so this deal is perfect for both our companies and in particular ToLocalise’s clients who reap the benefit of a larger team with more in-house services.

“ASK has recently developed its brand and is now a complete business to business service provider offering clients not only high quality translations but also graphic and website design and branding, E-commerce, audio and print solutions, including our ground-breaking print on demand service, making ASK a complete one-stop shop.”

To find our more about ASK Translation, please visit our website at www.translate.co.uk or call 0800 043 9831 and ask to speak to a member of the Account Management Team.

We had our first ISO9001 Audit earlier today and passed with flying colours.

With zero minor non-conformances, well above the average for the first audit, we have been recommended for ISO9001 certification by the auditing body, which should officially arrive in July.

The auditor from ISOQAR praised the staff he audited for their enthusiasm and professionalism, well done Kay, Ann, Lee, Emma, Sahar and Simon.

A big thank you to Elizabeth Pearce of Maverick Innovations Ltd who has been our ISO consultant assisted us with our quality manual, process maps and training … I got the feeling she was pleased as punch with zero non-conformances and that was a rare occurance!

After a year of putting it all together today has made all the hard work worthwhile.

Now we can go after work in the pharmaceutical industry!!

In a time of widespread financial uncertainty, one of the UK’s premier business to business service providers is offering their unique franchise opportunity absolutely free of charge.

The ASK Group, founded 20 years ago by its MD, Gary Keens, when he was 24, now has a diverse and prestigious client portfolio ranging from one man bands to organisations such as Tesco, the European Central Bank and UNICEF.

Continually adding services to its brand, ASK’s business is based on an ethical ethos coupled with the highest levels of customer service, and provides a complete one-stop-shop for business with services such as print, branding, design, marketing, telemarketing, translation, website design and ecommerce.

“Our goal,” enthuses Keens, “Is to become the UK’s leading B2B provider, and to be to business to business what Virgin is to business to consumer.”

“We have invested heavily in the latest technology and after extensive market research and trialling have developed a franchise scheme that allows professionals to work for themselves in partnership with a company going places and most importantly, prosper and earn substantial, uncapped income.”

Keens continues: “I have been blown away by the interest this has generated since we started advertising in the Daily Mail and other national newspapers in late January, and have been contacted by over 350 potential franchisees, over 120 from the Mail, in the last 2 months alone!”

ASK are already on course to sign up 100 franchisees this year and take their company nationwide into every business community.

The ASK Group is totally committed to the environment, and over the past 2 years, we have made significant inroads into reducing our carbon footprint. Working in conjunction with Climate Care, we have recently completed the procedures for offsetting our company’s carbon emissions.

Through the scheme, Climate Care funds projects in green energy and forest restoration around the world to reduce emissions on our behalf. We have offset over 70 tonnes in the past year alone, helping to reduce the impact which our activities have on the environment.

We are also incorporating eco-friendly practices into each and every area of our business. In our Print division, for example, making investments at the front end has enabled us to offer a greener print service. Our latest digital press does not require film or printing plates, and uses less electricity, so it is far more eco-friendly than traditional lithographic printing presses. We provide all our print solutions on recycled paper as standard, and source all non recycled paper from sustainable stock. Our cardboard and paper waste is donated to a local company, who recycle it into packaging materials.

As Managing Director, Gary Keens, explains, “Even simple procedures such as ensuring that lights and computers are switched off at the end of the day and using the air conditioning less help in a small way to reduce our impact on the environment. For my part, I now take the train to London rather than drive down, and now use a 1600cc car for the majority of my company business. Furthermore, we also hold the majority of our Board Meetings via teleconferencing, rather than flying members in from overseas, further reducing our carbon footprint.”

These are just examples of the ways we are pushing for greener working practices. If you would like more information about our green print and green related products, please call one of our dedicated customer service team on 0800 043 9831.

To find out more about Climate Care and its projects, please see www.climatecare.org .
 

Buying a company is always risky.

If the company has made a loss, or if the due diligence will take so long that a quick deal to help the vendors financial position is not possible, or if the company being acquired employs staff that mean the purchaser could be liable for a redundancy claim under TUPE, these are all reasons to put off a potential purchaser buying a small company.

There is a high quality translation company for sale at the moment that would like us to purchase them. Because of the credit crunch and state of the economy I am hesitant to take the risk.

We sat down earlier today and structured a unique deal that is win-win for both of us. I used my experience from the Book Publishing world where such deals seem common place.

We won’t actually buy the company, or the assets or the goodwill, so there is no risk to us. We will sign a deal to be the sole provider of all the services of the company, in effect be a back office supplier to them. We will fulfil all their contracts through our name and infrastructure but under license from them, still keeping their brand name alive. They continue to own their client base.

We will then pay them back a percentage of all sales for the next 10 years. In order to help them over an interim cash flow shortage we will advance some of the commission.

The advantage to them is they can in effect shut down and just earn money from their client base without having to employ anyone.

 The advantage to us is that although we do not add them as goodwill to our balance sheet (which is an intangible asset anyway that has to be written down), as we are paying a royalty commission all payments are taken into account in our operating profit and loss account. We then just add turnover.

The advantage to the vendor is that as there is no risk to the purchase, we are able to pay substantially more in commission over 3 years and beyond than they would ever earn from a risky cash purchase.

The big advantage to this is time, we can put such a deal in place in as early as 2 weeks.

Watch this blog space to see if the deal progresses and how it is working out.

Although our Accountants are very competent and professional, they don’t bring a huge amount to the party apart from accountancy.

As an entrepreneur I tend to seek out people with more experience than me, and after 20 years in business I seem to have experienced quite a lot!

Nick Winters, a partner at Vantis was recommended to me, and by chance I heard him speak an an Envestors event last month. Myself and Kay met him earlier today and were very very impressed.

So my next BIG question on my challenge is : Is Floating the answer for ASK…

Although considering floating on the AIM market is a long term option, I didn’t think it was affordable as I don’t have the around £500k it would probably take!

Nick was very positive and enthusiastic in the branding I have put in place, and suggested the PLUS Market as a way to raise capital and investment. PLUS seems to be where AIM was 15 years ago and already has over 200 companies with their primary quote on it, including Arsenal Holdings plc.

The advantage over AIM is that is likely to cost only 1/3 of what it would cost to float on AIM.

Nick and Vantis also seem to be a perfect match for ASK, and it is about time I became one of the smaller firms being looked after in an accountancy practice rather than one of the larger ones as is the case at present.

As I know little about floating and gaining investment, so it is probably time to change accountants and move to a firm that can help us gain the growth and investment we need to drive ASK forward, rather than just use a firm to perform our accounts.

Watch this Blog space to hear my experiences in changing accountants and weighing up different investment options…

As an innovative group of professional service companies, we like to keep ahead of the game. There are many SEO and media companies charging large monthly retainers that are not giving their clients results. The ASK Group has transparent pricing across all our divisions, and we do not consider this type of pricing remotely ethical.

Our research tells us you only want to pay on results!

The ASK Optimisation way…
You select the search terms and phrases you are interested in. We can of course assist you on the choice.
Tell us the search engines you want to target. Again, we can advise accordingly.
We analyse your current site free of charge.
We agree a fee you will be happy to pay for various page 1 rankings for your chosen keywords and phrases on your targeted search engines.
We optimise your site and keep optimising it free of charge.
We will only ever charge you on results.
These fees will be per month, per phrase and per search engine, and will be agreed in advance, before we start any work.

And as one of Europe’s leading translation companies, with offices in 12 countries, we can of course optimise any language site for any target market.

Interested? To find out more about ASK’s FREE optimisation services, visit www.askoptimisation.co.uk .

I am a great believer that the harder you work and more you put in the more you will get out.

This applies to life in general, sport, and to all levels and facets of business.

Without preaching to staff I do like to try encourage a good work ethic, and those who work for me know we do notice and appreciate hard work, and promote on that basis accordingly!

All my team worked incredibly hard to make the Business StartUp exhibition a success last Friday and Saturday and I am incredibly proud of them.

Our stand was one of the busiest at the event, and we worked tirelessly to speak to as many people as possible.

We are already speaking to people post event and believe it will prove to be a very succesful event.

Our target is to sign up 10 no cost franchisees or YourBrand partners as a result of the event, and already have 2 confirmed - our hard work and effort already breeding success!

I gave my presentation at the Business StartUp Show at the Excel Centre earlier today.

When giving presentations I like them to be short and concise - I’m boring enough at the best of times so don’t want to draw out the agony of listening to me! This particularly applies to both sales and internal presentations - to get high impact go for the sound bite approach - it works for politicians.

I was shocked by the interest, most of the seminars there were quite well attended but had empty seats, mine was full to the rafters with people sitting at the front and standing at the back and over 50 people outside unable to get in!

They did record it but unfortunately the sound acoustics were not good as the microphone was plugged into the video - so if you want to hear it you may have to strain your ears - www.askgroup.co.uk/index.php

I have given plenty of internal and sales presentations in the past, but this was the first one I have given at a public event so considering that I felt it went quite well.

That’s the problem with having run a business for 20 years. People assume lots, and they assume you are a natural and acomplished presenter, perhaps one day I will be.

However, to my surprise I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it seemed to go down well - so a good day all round.

Remember when listening to people talk how nerve racking it is standing up and talking in front of people you don’t know!

We are exhibiting at the Business Start Up exhibition on Friday and Saturday.

When we do an event we like to appear a major player and industry leader.

I would prefer to spend all my money at a single event rather than split it between 2 events and spread your resources more thinly.

Just having an exhibition stand and doing nothing else is a little bit like having a website but not driving traffic to it. Traffic is required to promote and sell.

I have made sure I am on the invited seminar speakers list, and rather than just use the seminar to promote and sell our company and opportunities, I have deliberately chosen a title, subject and description that will have maximum appeal to the visitors to the event.

We have also taken the back cover advert to the show guide, and taken 2 stands - 1 where we will promote and sell, the other where we will give presentations.

I have also made sure we are adequately covered staff wise, there is no point in doing an event and having visitors not having anyone to speak to. We will have 10 people there.

I should also like to congratulate all my staff involved in getting our new website and all the exhibition material ready on time to an incredibly tight timescale, especially Lee Hall, our Studio Director, Tom Wilson-Copp, our Marketing Manager, Jill Bates our Publicity Manager, Justin Wright our IT Manager and Keith Bradley our website designer in charge of our in-house sites. Well done guys.