In this issue...

@ Case Study: Solving the Staff Scheduling Challenges

@ Just Paste It!

@ How Important is IT?

Helping Leighton keep an $800m Project on Track

After securing an $800 million contract to provide construction services for the massive Gorgon LNG project on Barrow Island, Leighton needed a way to ensure that the right contracting personnel would be scheduled to be on the island at the right times.

Not an easy task when sometimes there are requirements for more than 1,500 contractors to be on the island!

Leighton came to us seeking some assistance so we built them an Excel-based 'Personnel Availability Schedule'.

The Schedule automatically collects data on rosters, leave requirements, and training schedules from various internal company sources. The data is then consolidated into a single user-friendly interface, which gives Leighton staff the ability to search the company's extensive list of personnel using many different search criteria.

The Schedule also produces a forward-looking 90-day calendar that provides a proposed rostering schedule after taking account of contractor availability and project needs.

This provides Leighton with a tool that not only enables them to see who is going where, it also allows them to plan future rosters and do "what-if" analyses to develop contingency plans and reduce risk.

Full Case Study

If you know of anyone who needs to manage staff or contractors, feel free to forward this on!

Just Paste It!

Excel has many very clever paste functions that can be very useful, especially if you are somebody who is not so keen on maths and formulas.

Let's say you are a retailer and have a list of prices in Excel for all your products. One day your boss comes to work in a particularly good mood and decides to have a storewide sale. '10 per cent of everything in store!' He exclaims proudly.

And now it is your job to calculate the new prices, while your boss, having done his work for the day, heads off to the nearest cafe.

Rather than messing around with formulas, you can take the advice of the heading of this article and 'Just Paste It'.

1. Enter your multiplier into a blank cell. In this example the multiplier is 0.9.

2. Select your multiplier cell and copy it.

3. Highlight your range of price data and then select 'Paste Special'.

4. Choose the 'Multiply' option in the Paste Special dialogue box and click 'OK'.

And there you have it! All your prices have now been decreased by 10 per cent. And there is not a formula in sight! You can now delete the value of 0.9 that you keyed into your original multiplier cell to keep your spreadsheet looking nice and clean.

And one last point to keep in mind: the 'Just Paste It' option also enables you to divide, add and subtract.

How Important is IT?

It's hard to read The Barrow without coming across some mention of information technology (IT). So this month, I've done some research regarding the use of IT in the Australian economy and how we compare to other countries.

That I managed to do all my research without leaving my office chair and am sending this to you via an e-mail that is easily dispatched directly to your mailbox in the blink of a central processor's eye is perhaps proof enough of the merits of IT. But how does Australia compare with the rest of the world?

Australian businesses are big broadband users - 97% of Australian businesses use broadband Internet. This puts us in fourth place on the OECD's league table in the business use of broadband.

Business broadband is big but don't take it home - household broadband use in Australia is relatively low. With 24 subscribers per 100 people, Australia ranks 18th among the OECD countries. Maybe this means Australians are smarter than the other 17 OECD countries since we do all our broadband Internet surfing at work where the boss pays for it!

The Internet really does bring us closer together - nearly 60% of Australian companies with more than 10 employees buy products online and about 33% sell online. The case that the Internet is bringing the world closer can be well made when you consider that it is Australia and our similarly isolated neighbour, New Zealand, that feature in the top-three Internet buyers and sellers in the OECD.

Australia: an IT user not an IT doer - Australia has a relatively small IT sector. Less than 5 per cent of our business sector workforce is directly employed in IT positions. Interestingly, this figure has remained largely unchanged since 1995.

Source: OECD

Comment: Australia may never be regarded as a world leader in IT as our comparative advantages lie elsewhere.

However, Australian businesses are prolific users of IT. The degree to which IT is used as a tool for trade in this country is perhaps not surprising, given our isolation from the rest of the world and it will be interesting to observe how this changes over time as the Government's National Broadband Network is rolled out.

Two things are certain: the world today is a different place to that of only a few years ago and there will more change and transformation in the years ahead. An interesting take on the power of IT to change the world was recently published by Deutsche Bank (full report).

The transformation in structure and value creation patterns ... driven by digital network technologies, has only just begun. The stages of development ushered in by the advent of the commercial Internet in the 1990s are massive, as the digital age holds out a broad spectrum of opportunities for everyone. Profound changes wrought by the network technologies are impacting all economic and social spheres. In the digital economy anyone can assume an active role and become involved.

Driven by future technological advances, the dynamics of the digital society will gain further force. In the long run, existing and newly created knowledge will lead to greater freedom and equal opportunities - the world over.

Watch this space (on your monitor of course)!!

Do you know of any CFO's, Analysts, Accountants, or Finance Professionals? 
Why not forward them a copy? They'll love you for it!