The three of us need to talk; What Ofgem has not told you about British Gas’ fine.

Reading time: 4 mins

Outcome: cheaper, more accurate bills  

£4.5m. Could your business deal with that fine?

The Low Down

Last month British Gas Business agreed were penalised £4.5 million for failing to deliver smart meters to their large business customers. I could tell you the differences between meters and about the art meters have inspired. However, worrying about that kind of information is only necessary for my team at The Procurement Group and me. Although, we do not focus on art! Plus, I promised I would keep the reading time to 4 minutes.

What does the penalty mean for your business?

Now to the juicy parts. Ofgem did not tell you what we often forget about our providers. Instead, we think about the huge bills our suppliers just sent and how much they charged you last quarter.

It is easy to overlook that, like you and I, they have growth targets, profit goals and infrastructure plans to meet. Penalties hit those plans. Therefore, the fundamental question to ask is ‘why did British Gas not install the smart meters?’.

The answer; to get more money from their business customers. If you do not have a smart meter, you will receive estimated bills. Suppliers overestimate, and you lose out because your business has to pay the providers more than your usage. Without smart meters, you pay more on every bill, for every site.

How does this affect your business?

Think about how much the estimated bills increase your business costs every month. Now multiply that by 12, and consider how much money you are wasting on your providers every year. Ask yourself, what could your business do with that amount of money? You could employ efficient new colleagues, fit out new sites, present improved profits to the board. However, you cannot. The suppliers have that money because they have not installed smart meters.

Are you angry? Good. Keep on reading.

How can you protect your business?

Install smart meters and get exact bills! No more estimations and no more suppliers celebrating their profits, while your business loses out. Additionally, to get smart meters in every site, just ask your supplier. The responsibility to fit the meter is on them. It will not cost you a thing.

Hang on a minute. You have almost finished this article, and you still do not know who’s having the conversation?

Smart meters have a sim that talks with a data collector and the supplier; thus, providing precise bills based on usage. It is the meter, data collector, and the supplier that must communicate with each other. To receive precise bills, the three of them must talk to each other. Naturally, providers do not want your bills to be exact. Therefore, this conversation happening is a problem our customers regularly face. So make sure they are talking by checking that your bills are accurate, not estimated.

Let’s go back to that money your business is wasting because of estimated bills. Now, let’s install smart meters at every site and ensure the communication channels are active on each smart meter.

What did you say your business could do with the money wasted? Let’s do it.

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Simon Unger is the MD of The Procurement Group, specialising in saving your business money. If your business is spending too much, let us help you save.

Email Simon | 0800 019 3244

Follow Simon on Twitter | Connect with Simon on LinkedIn

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How to Navigate Business Telecoms Like a Pro.

According to the OECD, Britain has one of the most expensive digital networks for businesses to use. We also have one of the most comprehensive, albeit with some black spots. So, what can you do about it?

1. Use a price comparison website.

Opera singers, pole dancing builders or meerkats… what a choice! These websites are great at comparing different deals from the main suppliers. But hang on… can you use these websites for your business? Well, no. No price comparison website we’ve seen does business telecoms. So, it’s a good job that we do! No opera, pole dancing or meerkats; just comparisons presented to you simply.

2. Check this map

Is your business operational in any of the weak signal areas? If so, it might be worth checking which suppliers offer the best service in that area. However, the maps might not tell the whole story and do you really want to find that your CEO lives in a black spot after the contract is signed? We have proven, tried and tested ways to ensure that you are 100% clear about coverage in key areas before signing your contract; it’s just another component of our Intelligent Cost Reduction plans.

3. Achieve Fair Market Value

You need to make sure that you are not sacrificing your business’ telecom’s customer service, voice/data quality and payment terms to get the cheapest deal. For business telecoms, alongside the price, we recommend listing the:

• billing cycle
• payment terms
• contract length
• call connection charges
• online billing access
• account management
• broadband upload/download speed
  

That way you can ensure your business achieves Fair Market Value. At The Procurement Group, our purpose is to help our customers achieve Fair Market Value. Our Intelligent Cost Control plans are not just about price; the plans are enshrined in a commitment not to  compromise service, product quality and payment terms.

That’s it! Simple, right? Now you can navigate business telecoms like a good ‘un. However, is that enough for your business? If you want to be a pro, why don’t you navigate your telecoms as a Procurement Group client? Call Simon Unger today on 0800 019 3244 to have your free 15-minute telecoms review. Or e-mail him now!

Facts That Finance Officers Ought To Know About Outsourcing Procurement

The outsourcing of procurement can be viewed by some in finance as handing over some or all of the control over the buying processes. The opposite couldn’t be further from the truth.

The truth is that outsourcing any of your procurement functions isn’t about passing over control. It’s about bringing aboard advisors, sometimes specialist advisors whose aim is to save in the short term and the long term simultaneously.

There’s many a way a procurement specialist could advise and bring expenditure down to increase net profits, but there’s also more benefits to be realised than the initial cost savings.

5 Ways Procurement Expertise Enhance Business Functions

1)      It adds a broader skill set to your organisation

When you outsource any or all of your procurement, you aren’t necessarily outsourcing every aspect of your procurement. If you have the resources internally, outsourcing adds more expertise to your existing department and also gives your staff access to other in-field experts. That can also lead to business efficiencies being enhanced, which is the sole purpose of procurement. Outsourcing can add to that, rather than replace it.

2)      Bottom-Line is Improved

All your expenditure throughout your organisation is net profit. If left unmanaged or even poorly managed, stakeholders will suffer. The objective of smarter procurement exercises is to reduce the overall cost of purchasing.

3)      Improved Risk Management

When done properly, after thoroughly investigating your options, you should be partnered with a professional organisation with a thorough understanding of commercial trading agreements, litigation matters and contractual expertise. They aren’t lawyers by right but they should possess a great deal of knowledge surrounding commercial contract laws, which will be able to serve you well on a professional services advisory capacity, which you may already be outsourcing anyway.

4)      Add appeal to your business

Clients are known to take businesses more seriously when they have a Corporate Responsibility Policy. They make it known that they are careful where they spend, making their businesses attractive to clients and investors alike. There’s a lot to be said for how you operate your business, and structure your processes to show you are operating ethically across your supply chain. That’s difficult to do without procurement expertise to assist.

5)      Frameworks can lay the foundations to your policies

Operating without a procurement framework isn’t a good idea. With one, everyone knows your policies, where they stand and the processes/channels to go through when buying anything of substance.

You don’t have to specifically bring aboard a procurement officer to implement a procurement framework, as you could approach it through outsourcing to harness the existing frameworks already used by established firms specialising in procurement.

In conclusion

Outsourcing some or all of your procurement functions isn’t just about realising cost reductions. That it will do, but it also brings about some expertise that many businesses don’t have access to and the ones that do, the additional expertise adds to it.

All of the processes work to enhance your businesses reputation, while minimising risk to your business through effective contract management and where possible, change management too, but at the heart of the process is always cost reductions. Sometimes that’s in the short-term, other times it’s the long game that’s played with a lot of strategy for huge savings across the board.

In some cases, when businesses are struggling financially, it’s a revision of the procurement functions that could essentially turn the entire businesses finances around by realising savings already missed through poor contract management or even a lack of market knowledge.

It pays to collaborate. 

3 Tips For Devising An Effective Procurement Strategy

B2B sales are extremely competitive, however, for early stage and growing businesses, the buying of such services can be complex, or more so than you may have imagined anyway.

The truth is that no matter what you’re buying, you’re always going to have to haggle a bit. Bartering isn’t always about cost either. It’s about getting the most value from suppliers, while paying a reasonable amount for the value you’re offered as part of whatever service you’re buying.

To ensure you get the deserved and required value, make sure you have the following three essentials worked into your procurement strategy.

1)      Use contract aggregation

When there’s a significant need in your business and you assess the market to discover there’s few suppliers large enough to accommodate what you need, it may be more effective to split your contracts into smaller lots. One of the main advantages you get with contract aggregation is you open the bidding process up to smaller sized business. This is particularly useful for working with local suppliers instead of large nationals.

It doesn’t always work out cheaper, and there will be more administration involved to oversee the contracts, however from a local economy standpoint, partnering with local suppliers can be highly advantageous.

2)      Open pre-procurement discussions with suppliers

This one should be obvious but unfortunately it isn’t always done. Before approaching the market for any supplies you need, research should be done. This isn’t just a case of researching online. Get on the telephone with representatives, go out and meet some suppliers and discuss what you need, find out what’s available and gain first-hand insight into what the market has to offer.

Efficiently researching the market by opening pre-procurement discussions will let you find out a lot more about what’s available and then use factual information to put together your written brief for inviting proposals from potential suppliers.

The more information you have and therefore can give, the more detailed an offering you can put out for tendering, leading to more informative bids from suppliers.

3)      Award contracts based on quality of proposals and cost

One of the worst things you can do for your business and customers is to accept the lowest bid from any service provider or supplier. There are some companies that will deliberately low-ball during the bidding process in an effort to seem competitive. Realistically though, the offer isn’t competitive at all. What it often can be is risky. If you contract with a supplier who provides a service at cost to them, meaning there’s no profit in it, they are likely to deliver a substandard service. That’s something you could definitely do without. The more obvious risk is that it won’t be sustainable therefore you’d need to find a new supplier eventually. And probably do some grovelling with disgruntled customers due to your suppliers’ impact on your service.

In conclusion

To drive the most value from any supplier, always engage in pre-procurement discussions as part of your market research. If you feel there’s a lack of sizeable firms able to accommodate your business needs, break things down to encourage smaller or local suppliers to put their proposals forward.

Always award your contracts based on the value you can get, with a realistic figure attached to the offer. Never award to the cheapest contractor, unless you’re confident and they are too that they can deliver the service with quality and make it monetarily worthwhile to partner with your business.

The suppliers you choose to award your contracts to will be a stakeholder in your business so make sure they are a company you’re comfortable working with before you engage them for the long-term duration of the contract. 

5 Questions To Answer When Developing Your Procurement Policy

Not every business has a procurement policy and in some cases it’s actually damaging not to have this document as public funding can stipulate that the requirements for funding requires you to have one. The reason being that it ensures transparency and that when you buy goods and services, you have a policy to follow ensuring you get consistent value for money.

Even if you aren’t applying for public funding, it’s still a good idea to have a procurement policy in place for you and your staff to follow. It sets the guidelines in clear terms for everyone to follow and consistently obtain value from selected partners.

Work your answers to these 5 questions into your procurement policy

1.      Will bulk purchasing discounts really reduce costs or add to storage costs?

The majority of B2B suppliers will look to get a favourable order on a regular basis. To do so, you’ll find bulk or combined services are offered in order to maximise billings for the supplier. This doesn’t always equate to value to you though as you could agree to bulk price discounts only to find you aren’t using what you pay for, which can increase your holding/storage costs.

2.      Will you need to engage knowledge partners to speed up the time it takes to obtain a specialist service?

For technical services for your IT department, or tech equipment you’re buying or leasing, do you have enough knowledge to know what you’re agreeing to?

For more expensive and what could be considered specialist services, you don’t really want to be relying on a supplier you haven’t done business with before. You’d be going on the recommendations of others at best.

A more informative approach would be to hire a knowledge partner or outsource to a specialist partner with the knowledge to listen to what you need, provide you with an assessment and engage with suppliers on your behalf. If you’re not confident in approaching certain sectors, it may be worth including in your policy what you’ll do in the event you need a specialist service.

3.      How many of your employees will have the authority to buy goods and services and to what amount?

As this will be a procurement policy for the long term, you want to make it as evergreen as possible. Plan it with growth in mind by including members of your staff who will be authorised to engage with suppliers for any goods and services their department requires.

It may also be worth having someone senior in your company named as a procurement officer who signs off on purchases before any other member of staff can proceed with ordering goods and services, or at least allocate budget amounts per department with anything exceeding the department budget requiring authorisation.

4.      What will be your selection criteria for awarding contracts?

It’s much easier to award contracts to the right supplier when you set out clear terms of what you’re looking for from them. As an example, you could choose to look for the following criteria for suppliers to meet:

·         Quality

·         Cost

·         Use of resources / green initiatives

·         Reputation

·         Guarantees

·         Service consistency

·         Customer service

In cases when there’s high competition, using a selection criteria as a checklist will help you narrow down your potential pool of candidates to progress into discussion with.

5.      How much information needs to be revealed while maintaining commercial confidentiality? 

      There are going to be some contracts requiring you to grant informational access to third party organisations. This is increasingly happening with e-services, operating via the cloud. You must be in complete control of confidential data within your organisation and should consider how much you really need to disclose to third party suppliers.

How SMBs Can Control Costs With A Streamlined Buying Process

Buying items and services is a necessary evil of doing business, its operational costs. Smaller sized businesses tend not to pay too much attention to detail and it’s a costly mistake to make when it comes to growth.

The larger your company becomes, the more you need to buy in. That’s not just for raw materials for a production process either. Even hiring staff will eventually take a team of HR personnel to recruit the right talent to the right position. PR staff is needed to target media campaigns to get new customers through your doors and paying for your products and services.

The more your company grows, the more you’re going to need to spend.

For that reason, the best time to optimise your expenditure is before you expand. Having a clearly defined procurement procedure and policy in place is the ultimate way to gaining a huge competitive advantage.

Applying the two out of three process to procurement

When you’re at the beginning of a buying stage for any business supplies, there are only three words you need to remember.

1)  Fast

2)  Good

3)  Cheap

In a perfect world, you’d have all three of the above from a supplier. Thing is though… it’s not an ideal world so you can only have two. Pick.

·        Fast and good

·        Good and cheap

·        Cheap and fast

But never fast, good and cheap.

To strike the right combination, there are a couple of things you need to do. The first is to be exquisitely clear in your objectives.

If you’re renewing a print contract, why do you want to change supplier? Is it due to poor customer service? If that’s the scenario, then perhaps fast and good would be a good option to aim for. If on the other hand you were to be sourcing stationery for the office, cheap and good quality products may be a good combination.

The trick to effective sourcing is prioritising your needs. Basing it on the level of service you need. Do you need it fast? If so, expect it not to be cheap. 

Time is money after all and if you’re in a rush to get supplies, suppliers will be in a rush to add a mark-up for the speed of delivery.

Even the Royal Mail won’t give you a next day delivery service without insisting on a premium. They’re in the fast and good category. Cheap, it’s not if you want it fast. If you want cheap, it’s second class postage which will be good and cheap, with the sacrifice of fast.

So ask yourself what you need. A fast service, good quality, or is price the deciding factor?

Once you can honestly answer that, then you move onto the next question of where do you get what you need? This is the investigative stage and it’s where you’re identifying potential suppliers.

What makes a supplier considerable? 

You can break this down into a five step process…

1) Set a well-defined criteria that potential suppliers must meet

This could be things like the supplier must be:

a)  Local

b)  Have a stringent quality control process

c)   Have a reasonable minimum order quantity

d)  Reasonable payment terms and conditions of service

e)  A clear returns or guarantee policy

f)    Have verifiable references

What you’ll find at the early stage of buying any B2B service is there are a lot more suppliers than you initially thought.

2) Define the process you’ll use

When you have your potential suppliers lined up, you need a process and a time scale for assessing suppliers against your criteria. At this stage you should also be thinking about the method of outreach. Will a trade publication be sufficient in letting suppliers know what you need, or will you have someone appointed from within your company to put RFPs (requests for proposals) out to potential suppliers?

3) Ask for the bids to be submitted

The full details of the products you need or the services you need supplied to your business needs to be clearly stated in a written document so that suppliers can get a full understanding of what you require them to do. Clarity at this stage is crucial for getting a correct quotation and the negotiations set off on the right foot.

4) Evaluate each submission received to select a partner and negotiate terms

Evaluation can only be done when all the bids have been submitted. For this reason, in your briefing to suppliers, give them a reasonable deadline to have their proposals submitted for consideration. Once that deadline is reached, evaluate your responses to narrow the selection process and decide which supplier best meets the criteria you set at the beginning stage. Any supplier submitting a bid past the deadline should probably be dropped from the process as they’ll have missed a deadline before you start working together. Start the way you mean to go on. 

5) Monitor the supplier continuously

Even the best suppliers will have a hiccup here and there when something goes wrong therefore plan for that to happen by assigning someone as a named contact to oversee the contract. They’ll be responsible for performance reviews ensuring the supply provision is overseen and also for managing the relationship with any key person involved in the service provision.

In our experience, rapport has been essential to long-lasting relationships with suppliers, making it easy to sustain a healthy working relationship that benefits both businesses while making the renegotiating stages flow much smoother and more beneficial. 

Ultimately, the better the preparation is in the early stages of the buying process, the better clarity there is, resulting in clear communication with much less misunderstandings. 

Image courtesy of krostewitz.com.

Getting Ahead With Procurement Processes

It doesn’t matter what size of company you have, you will have suppliers, overheads and bills coming in that need paying. You’re also going to have contractual obligations, whether or not you have an internal legal team and/or procurement team at your disposal.

No matter the size of your operation, you must control your overheads otherwise they’ll rip your organisation apart.

Late payments, supplier difficulties, delayed deliveries, expired contracts, rates increases etc. The list goes on.

What tends to happen in business though is the early stage start-ups focus on strategic growth without concern for the consequences.

Growth will happen when you put the efforts in and focus on strategic growth tactics, but when you do find your organisation growing, so too will your obligations, probably your staff and most certainly your overheads.

The more obligations your business has, the more reliant you will become on your suppliers. Without careful management, you risk your business being placed in a vulnerable position should your supplier find themselves with a competitive advantage because of your inability to control your procurement processes.

You absolutely must have processes in place, policies to control them and strategic systems to manage them both. Without those in place, your overheads will increase - substantially if you’re not careful.

Why be bothered with all the hassle?

If you’re focusing on growth right now, get yourself ahead by preparing for when you reach that stage. Visualise your business a year from now, two years from now, five years from now and you’ll likely see yourself going places.

Perhaps you’ll have a team of 50 employees or you could expand your operations by opening on more sites, hiring more people to aid in your expansion, in which case, prepare for that time.

What procurement specialists can do to help you prepare

If you don’t have the capital to invest in your own procurement staff to get things under control, outsource your outsourcing. The reason being that whilst the cost-savings will take longer to experience, you won’t be wasting cash flow in the short-term by spending on growth strategies to see the fruits of your labour wasted. You will retain more of your profits by having proficient supplier management processes in place, preventing things getting out of control.

All too often, what happens is companies experience expansion, then realise too late that they’re spending way more than they’re comfortable with and then have to bring in experts in procurement to clear up the mess made by inefficient sourcing and supplier management.

It prevents the battle of all battles…

When companies look to bring about cost efficiency, procurement experts are trusted to deliver on savings. To do that, it takes strategic sourcing, contract reviews, a huge advisory role and often a complete transformation of sourcing due to non-existent procurement policies.

As such, the savings commitment you will be looking for, will take longer to deliver because more tactical groundwork will need to be done before savings can be realised.

For any business focusing on growth strategies right now, get prepared for the increased obligations that accompany that by putting in place efficient procurement policies, and processes to manage the increase of suppliers and the relationships that come with them.

The more proactive you are with your procurement; the more savings you’ll lock-in before you start wasting it on inefficient sourcing methods. 

Image courtesy of norcazacademy.co.za.

Why is 'big data' a big deal?

It is common knowledge that the world has become more digitally complex over the recent years. The advanced nature of digitalisation has increased interconnectivity between people and businesses alike. Defined networks now make up the infrastructure of our technical, social and working environments. As technology grows more and more powerful, its partnership with mathematics has opened the door for ‘big data’.

Big data has been defined as “extremely large data sets that may be analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behaviour and interactions.” Big data can become a popular and seductive concept for procurement leaders, providing them with beneficial analysis and the answers to many burning questions. Queries around to how to reduce costs, increase competitiveness and heighten profits can all be answered with the help of big data. However, leaders are still apprehensive that a computer can present such answers to crucial decisions. Therefore, in order to get the most out of big data, the users need to be educated and confident about how complex and accurate this data can be.

The ability to apply tailored tools and options allows us to create a much more complex purchasing environment and therefore aiding better outcomes. The collaboration with globalisation and technology also provides businesses with information on specialists markets and cultural differences, aiding supply chain relations. This complex marketplace analysis does not only outline purchasing behaviours but also anticipates the future strategic challenges and potential new opportunities.

In order to successfully evaluate business scenarios, it is recommended that you should focus on planning on how to execute your new procurement strategy. Having the ability to effectively comprehend and focus on complexity has provided procurement with the opportunity to enable cost-effective growth for many businesses. This successful understanding has had outstanding results for many procurement departments, making them able to quickly move into expanding markets, reduce cultural barriers and allowing for a greater overall competitive advantage.

Gaining data surrounding global market intelligence also allows leaders to identify potential procurement hot-spots and enables better decision-making to be carried out. This in-depth thinking can dramatically affect procurement, putting it at the top of its game. The results should show a positive and genuine ROI. In contemporary procurement departments, having the ability to read and analyse these complex data sets is a highly sort after skill. Partner this with the ability to visualise and outline the road ahead will be the biggest advantage for successful future procurement.

Top 5 biggest threats to the world right now

Everyday we are faced with headlines containing the word ‘threat’ or ‘crisis’, but what actually are the biggest threats that today’s world is facing?  

Prior to the World Economic Forum next week, results have been released following a review of the biggest issues that could affect the world over the next 10 years. The same analysis from last year’s survey listed state conflict and water security high up the list of global issues. However this year’s report, carried out by over 750 experts, identified all the significant environmental, geographical, political and economic threats that may worsen in the next decade.

Here is a list of the greatest risks found following the World Economic Forums research: 

1. Unemployment

Although economic issues feature far less prominently, unemployment still remains an important issue. A slow but steady economic growth reduces the likelihood of another financial crisis happening any time soon, but the likelihood of unemployment still remains high.  Consistent joblessness keeps inequality within society and causes a lot of social tension.  Yet again, the opportunity for global prosperity remains out of reach. Vast technological advancements and a slow economic growth also mean that unemployment is set to be a long term issue.

2. Migration

Headlines of the large scale migration crisis reach us on a daily basis, but this issue will expand further over the next 18 months. This involuntary but necessary mass movement of people in the past year is set to continue, overtaking other potential global risks. Records show that over 60 million refugees fled from their homes in the previous 12 months. The government and policy makers have to prioritise this crisis and support those in need.

3. Climate change

Even though migration has the greatest likelihood of persisting, climate change looks to have the greatest overall impact on the world.  The inability to confront the issue of the temperature rising means that climate change has now been classified as a Global Risk. This was outlined before the 2015 Climate Change conference in Paris. However, dealing with the effects of climate change can prove a much more complex task when compared to other issues,

4. State Conflict

The results from the survey also revealed that one of the biggest threats to affect the world in the next 10 years will be from political tensions. Such crises including that in Ukraine, Middle-East, Russia, China are all suffering from strained relations and strategic power struggles. Although these struggles are not directly violence related, these issues can cause global instability in both the present and the future.

5. Oil Prices

Oil prices have dropped to the lowest prices since 2004. This reduction in price has come as a positive shock for the global economy and has helped from consumer spending. The recent results shown that petrol may even become cheaper than bottled water in the UK. However, experts say that the quicker the price reduces the faster it will rebound. These potential higher prices could squeeze consumers and increase global inflation.

The Hidden Law That Could Be Undermining Your Business

Do you walk the walk, or talk the talk? You can’t do both, so which is the most effective for your business?

An interesting perspective from 'Yes, Minister' helps us to open our eyes to a hidden corporate culture. In the initial chapter, we are introduced to the Open Government white paper. This document provides proof that they intend to help the minister implement his stated policy goals. However, as times goes on it is revealed that this document is actually a prime example of the Law of Inverse Relevance.

"The less you intend to do about something,

the more you have to keep talking about it."

Understanding the Law of Inverse Relevance, might seem far away from what you considered the business environment to be like. However, once you surpass the confusion, it all become clears.

For example, you are scouring through a global conglomerates website and come across their well scripted mission statement.  In relation to the Law of Inverse Relevance, this statement is merely a piece of text that they want people to believe that represents their company and what they do. However this representation isn't what they’re actually doing.  Simply writing a good quality mission statement isn't enough - don’t just talk the talk.

This law provides explanation of why you are more likely to get ripped off at “Honest Harry's Hardware Store” than a basic hardware shop. Another good example is an MD stating that his workforce is “one big happy family” when the reality is it is a group of dissatisfied, unhappy workers. The Law of Inverse Relevance also explain why companies employ Ethics Officers, Diversity Policies, CSR and Environmental Standards departments. It is a purely for perception.

But don’t panic, all this talk is actually saving you money! Because it's keeping you from getting things done.

This law has brought to light some interesting revelations, including:

• Some of the most successful businesses don't have mission statements, because they know what they are aiming for.
• The top innovative businesses rely on their customers to decide whether their new products are good.
• Socially responsible businesses act responsibly from personal interest rather than for a good perceived reputation.
• The best leaders portray great leadership rather than spending time and effort claiming to be excellent leaders.

The principle is simple you either "talk the talk" or you "walk the walk."