Waikato Business News August/September 2020
Waikato Business News has for a quarter of a century been the voice of the region’s business community, a business community with a very real commitment to innovation and an ethos of co-operation.
Waikato Business News has for a quarter of a century been the voice of the region’s business community, a business community with a very real commitment to innovation and an ethos of co-operation.
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16 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS <strong>August</strong>/<strong>September</strong> <strong>2020</strong><br />
PKF welcomes<br />
new partner<br />
What the world needs now...<br />
Johann van<br />
Loggerenberg<br />
PKF Hamilton has welcomed<br />
another partner to its line-up.<br />
Johann van Loggerenberg has<br />
been with the firm for three<br />
years and was previously its<br />
audit manager. He was made a<br />
partner earlier this year. He joins<br />
the five other partners: Alison<br />
Nation, Steve Stark, Glen Martyn,<br />
Matthew Fulton and Bernard<br />
Lamusse. Born in South Africa,<br />
van Loggerenberg moved to<br />
New Zealand with his family when<br />
he was 16. He graduated from<br />
the University of <strong>Waikato</strong> in 2013<br />
with a Bachelor of Management<br />
Studies majoring in accounting<br />
and graduated as a Chartered<br />
Accountant in 2016.<br />
Fast rail backed<br />
Hamilton Mayor Paula Southgate<br />
has welcomed the announcement<br />
the Government will undertake a<br />
business case to investigate the<br />
potential for rapid rail between<br />
Hamilton and Auckland. The<br />
government intends investigating<br />
four possible scenarios, ranging<br />
from extending electrification<br />
of the existing route to building<br />
a new rail alignment alongside<br />
the existing rail corridor. Each<br />
scenario would connect both<br />
city centres. Mayor Southgate<br />
said investigating rapid rail was<br />
a “natural extension” to the work<br />
already underway to ensure better<br />
connections between both fastgrowing<br />
cities.<br />
Is trust, sweet trust. business? When it comes<br />
to being trusted, business is<br />
not hitting the mark. People<br />
What and whom<br />
do you trust?<br />
Worldwide, what<br />
and whom the population<br />
trusts has shifted significantly<br />
over the past nine<br />
months. And businesses,<br />
as a whole, are less trusted<br />
today than they were at the<br />
start of this year.<br />
I’ve referred to the<br />
Edelman Trust Barometer<br />
before in this column. It’s<br />
an annual survey of populations<br />
around the world,<br />
including New Zealand, and<br />
monitors public trust levels<br />
of key institutions such as<br />
government, business and the<br />
media. Google “<strong>2020</strong> Edelman<br />
Trust Barometer” for an<br />
interesting read.<br />
After Covid-19 hit the<br />
world, this year Edelman<br />
updated the Barometer in<br />
May from its annual result in<br />
January. Predictably, people<br />
are tending to trust government<br />
more than ever before<br />
as we look to government<br />
leaders to get us through<br />
this uncertain time.<br />
Around the world, trust<br />
in the media is also at an alltime<br />
high. But predictably,<br />
a majority of people (67 percent)<br />
are fearful about misinformation<br />
being spread about<br />
the Covid-19 virus. Thus,<br />
social media is not trusted by<br />
the vast majority.<br />
So, what about<br />
want to see businesses doing<br />
more for their staff, their communities,<br />
their suppliers and<br />
others who depend on them<br />
for livelihoods.<br />
The Edelman Trust Barometer<br />
survey found that, “To<br />
increase trust, business should<br />
focus on solutions, not selling,<br />
with respondents calling for<br />
the private sector to collaborate<br />
with competitors (and)<br />
redefine their company’s purpose<br />
and goals around fighting<br />
the pandemic.<br />
“Fewer than one in three<br />
respondents (29 percent)<br />
believe CEOs are doing an<br />
outstanding job responding to<br />
demands placed on them by the<br />
pandemic…”<br />
So, here’s a question for<br />
<strong>Waikato</strong> business owners<br />
and managers reading this<br />
column: What have you<br />
done since March to stabilise<br />
and increase trust levels<br />
in your staff, customers and<br />
others who matter to your<br />
business success? The complicating<br />
factor in the current<br />
environment, of course, is<br />
that you must build this trust<br />
with audiences who are often<br />
worried, fearful, sceptical and<br />
ready to find fault with any<br />
wrong step you take. Plus, you<br />
are likely focused on keeping<br />
the doors open, finding new<br />
markets, maintaining customer<br />
bases, holding onto staff and<br />
generally staying afloat. Who<br />
can afford to spend time<br />
thinking about maintaining<br />
and building trust? I would<br />
say you can’t afford not to.<br />
Waiting until Covid-19 blows<br />
over might just be too late.<br />
So, what do businesses need<br />
to be proactively doing to<br />
keep their ‘trust banks’ full?<br />
Here are a few key things:<br />
Be seen.<br />
If you are a company that’s<br />
doing the right thing, caring<br />
for your people and going the<br />
extra mile for customers during<br />
this time, remember to not<br />
only do the right thing but tell<br />
people you’re doing the right<br />
thing. But be careful in your<br />
delivery. This isn’t about blowing<br />
your trumpet; it’s about<br />
demonstrating your values to<br />
those who matter. This is also<br />
the time to ensure you can be<br />
found offline and on.<br />
That means having a great<br />
social media presence and<br />
interacting on each channel in<br />
a meaningful way.<br />
PR AND COMMUNICATIONS<br />
> BY HEATHER CLAYCOMB<br />
Heather Claycomb is director of HMC Communications, a<br />
Hamilton-based, award-winning public relations agency<br />
Listen more than you talk.<br />
Whether it’s your staff, your<br />
customers or your suppliers,<br />
people trust someone who<br />
genuinely listens. Now more<br />
than ever, businesses must<br />
adjust to continually changing<br />
circumstances. You’ll<br />
make the best decisions when<br />
you’ve taken the time to truly<br />
listen to those around you.<br />
Tell great stories.<br />
People want to be inspired<br />
during this international crisis<br />
we find ourselves in. Share<br />
what your business is doing<br />
through heart-warming stories<br />
that endear people to<br />
your company and your people.<br />
And remember that while<br />
words are great, videos and<br />
photos are much better.<br />
And remember that tried<br />
and true strategy of trust<br />
building: getting others – your<br />
customers, your business partners,<br />
your staff – telling your<br />
stories for you.<br />
Keep your promises.<br />
This goes without saying.<br />
People are looking for businesses<br />
and leaders who tell<br />
them what they are going to<br />
do and then deliver.<br />
Be consistent, show progress<br />
toward goals and communicate<br />
often.<br />
This also means acknowledging<br />
what you don’t know<br />
and recognising when things<br />
might have to change as you<br />
navigate your way along this<br />
new journey.<br />
Keep it real.<br />
No matter what you do, be<br />
honest with people and be<br />
true to who you are as a company<br />
and as a leader.<br />
People are overly sceptical<br />
at the moment. Therefore,<br />
they don’t want to<br />
see anything overly glossy<br />
or contrived.<br />
Just be you. Authenticity<br />
always wins when<br />
trust is on the line.<br />
Text-to-voice technology<br />
Hiring voice talent for<br />
voiceover work can be<br />
expensive, particularly<br />
if you have to do it multiple<br />
times for different languages.<br />
Many of the world’s information<br />
technology giants offer textto-voice<br />
or text-to-speech services<br />
which turn typed text into<br />
TECH TALK<br />
> BY DAVID HALLETT<br />
David Hallett is a co-founder and director of Hamilton software<br />
specialist Company-X.<br />
audible speech or voice. These<br />
high-quality audio files can be<br />
used to narrate software, both<br />
in standard operation and help<br />
sections, accompany training<br />
videos, or even act as voice-over<br />
tracks for videos.<br />
While text-to-speech or<br />
text-to-voice technology is<br />
reasonably mature, the end<br />
results are not always perfect,<br />
and the scriptwriter has no control<br />
over how the voice in the file<br />
sounds. Company-X built a textto-voice<br />
editor taking advantage<br />
of this technology that allows<br />
the user to make the voice sound<br />
almost like natural speech.<br />
Speech Synthesis Markup<br />
Language (SSML) tags control<br />
emphasis, pitch, speed and tone.<br />
A variety of male and female<br />
voices and languages are available.<br />
The text-to-voice or textto-speech<br />
editor builds a pronunciation<br />
library of acronyms<br />
and specialist terminology.<br />
With this editing tool, the world<br />
leader in milking equipment and<br />
dairy solutions, DeLaval International,<br />
has transformed the<br />
manual voice translation process<br />
internationally into a fully automated<br />
digital process.<br />
The Company-X text-tovoice<br />
editor removed the need<br />
for DeLaval to book voiceover<br />
artists, directors, sound technicians<br />
and recording studios<br />
for six languages. Instead of<br />
a half-day block of recording<br />
costing tens of thousands<br />
of dollars per language, the<br />
audio files were produced in<br />
minutes at 10 per cent of the<br />
cost. DeLaval’s production<br />
staff can edit and resynthesize<br />
the result at any time using<br />
SSML tags. If the material<br />
needs to be updated the user<br />
can replace the entire text and<br />
produce the voice file within a<br />
few mouse clicks.<br />
Apart from the automated<br />
voice file generation, the textto-voice<br />
or text-to-speech editor<br />
created a translation platform<br />
significantly reducing<br />
the time to deliver translated<br />
content to the global market.<br />
The text-to-voice or text-tospeech<br />
tool delivers consistent<br />
results across all regions.<br />
Skills group<br />
appointment<br />
<strong>Waikato</strong> software specialist<br />
Company-X co-founder and<br />
director David Hallett has<br />
been elected Information and<br />
Communication Technology<br />
(ICT) and Creative representative<br />
of the <strong>Waikato</strong> Regional Skills<br />
Leadership Group. The group<br />
was formed in June to identify<br />
and support better ways<br />
of meeting future skills and<br />
workforce needs in Hamilton and<br />
the <strong>Waikato</strong>. It is supported by a<br />
team of data analysts, advisors<br />
and workforce specialists at<br />
the MBIE. “My vision in joining<br />
the <strong>Waikato</strong> Regional Skills<br />
Leadership Group is to help<br />
increase opportunities in the ICT<br />
and creative space for the newly<br />
unemployed and those who<br />
want to enter the fields,”<br />
Hallett said.