The Brave Group Pty Ltd is now the official Australian office for The Great Game of Business (originated MO, USA) providing local support for Australian and New Zealand businesses. With Certified Coaches located across Australia, The Brave Group are experts in transformative cultural change typified by The Great Game. Each coach brings an average of 15 years playing the game and will focus on coaching local business to help them deliver rapid financial results and long-lasting cultural change.

The Great Game of Business opens the books and educates employees on business finance creating a culture where employees think, act and feel like business owners. The Great Game of Business focuses on the importance of engaging a team, of creating increased knowledge and financial understanding so that the culture of the business becomes the driving force behind success. Underpinning The Great Game, are the core beliefs that improving financial performance within any business can only occur if the people are part of, understand and drive, those changes. It links people and the business in a common goal. It is the only truly transparent business culture and is proven to be the differentiator in attracting and retaining people.

“I am thrilled that our organisation, The Brave Group, has been given the opportunity to be the official office for The Great Game of Business in Australia and New Zealand. Our team has firsthand experience in the financial and cultural benefits that the Great Game system brings to a company and its people, and we are passionate about creating a community of like-minded organisations here in this region” The Brave Group co-Founder Kelli Hayes.

Certified Great Game of Business Coaches; Kelli Hayes, Sue Robinson, Adam Nicholls, and Bianca Presutto, have firsthand experience playing the game for an Australian company that was a Great Game of Business All Star and also inducted into The Great Game of Business Hall of Fame.  With extensive coaching and consulting experience and a proven and practical approach to applying the game, each brings their own strengths to help like-minded businesses with a tailored approach – no matter where they are in their Great Game of Business journey 

The Brave Group is proud to officially represent The Great Game of Business in Australia.

Canva, the global visual communications platform, today announced a suite of new workplace products and features created to empower anyone to communicate visually, on any device, from anywhere in the world.

“Visual communication is becoming an increasingly critical skill for teams of every size across almost every industry,” said Canva co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins. “It has been incredible to see the continued growth of Canva over the last few years, as more and more people embrace the power of visual communication to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals. With the launch of our new Visual Worksuite, we’re bringing simple design products to the workplace to empower every employee, at every organization and on every device.”

Canva’s new visual worksuite comes as the company marks the milestone of more than 85 million global users, who produce more than 180 designs every second. As enterprise usage soars throughout a variety of professions and industries, Canva is rapidly becoming the design platform of choice in the workplace. This demand is evidenced by the more than 10,000 current jobs on LinkedIn listing Canva as a desired skill across many companies, including American Express, Amazon, TikTok, LEGO and Google.

From large organizations to small businesses, more than 4 million paying customers are embracing Canva for Teams – the company’s collaborative all-in-one design solution – to empower their workforce who have increasing needs to communicate visually. This has more than tripled in the last twelve months as companies such as Zoom, Salesforce, PayPal, Reddit, Sony Music and OrangeTheory replace legacy design tools with Canva’s all-in-one platform.

“Canva has been an invaluable tool for our business, transforming how our creative and social teams work with one another by making it easier for staff to create new designs in a way that maintains brand consistency,” says Marissa Kraines, Vice President of Social and Content Marketing at Salesforce. “It’s also enabled our team to scale best practices when it comes to visual communications across the company, ensuring that we can create compelling content across all of our social and owned channels.”

New worksuite: Docs, Whiteboards, Websites, Video, Data Visualisation and more

Canva Docs: Built with the modern workplace in mind, Canva Docs makes traditional text documents more visually captivating, while also including key collaboration features like comments and real time collaboration. Users can also access Canva’s 100 million+ library of design assets and embed them into their work for a personalized approach to document creation. Plus, in a world where presenting work is often not text based, Canva Docs can easily be turned into a fully fledged Canva Presentation with the simple click of a button.

Canva Websites: A new way to build simple websites for any occasion. Create visually appealing and interactive websites from any device without the technical skills needed to do so. With hundreds of responsive professional-level website templates, customizable domains and adjustable page heights, a highly secure and optionally password protected website can be created and published in minutes. Built to drive engagement, it also comes with Canva’s new Design Insights analytics feature, which sheds light on site visits and allows the builder to get a pulse on audience and interest.

Canva Whiteboards: Canva Whiteboards bring a fast and fresh approach to how teams shape and explore ideas together. Combining the simplicity of Canva’s editing experience with an infinite canvas, Canva Whiteboards comes with a range of features designed for brainstorming and team collaboration. From sticky notes to images and diagrams, synced timer to keep brainstorming on track, and more, this new product embraces the world of hybrid work to encourage collaboration and productivity in distributed teams.

Video Background Remover: One of Canva’s most popular features is now available as part of the Canva Video Suite, taking video creation to the next level. With one click, users can remove the background from any video making it faster and easier than ever to create professional-looking content without expansive budgets or complex software.

Expanding Canva Print: While much of visual communication is digital, when there is a need for a physical product, Canva Print makes the process simple, and approaches it in a sustainable way. As of today, anyone can print more than 35 products through Canva Print and have it delivered to their doorstep in record time. This includes everything from invitations to flyers, photo books and hoodies, mugs posters, and much more.

Committed to a sustainable future, Canva will plant a tree for every print order placed through its partnership One Print, One Tree reforestation program. As of today, more than 2.4 million trees have been planted with a further 5 million trees to be planted by the end of the year.

Data Visualization: Anyone can level up their data storytelling with Flourish, making it possible to turn dense data and statistics into simple, clear and easy to understand interactive data visualizations. With templates for almost any need – from animated bar races, to drill-down sunbursts – it’s easier than ever to make complex data accessible and meaningful to anyone, in any organization, in the workplace.

Remote Control for Presentations: Canva adds remote presentation control to its Presentation product, enabling multiple presenters to control the flow of their presentation from any device using a new virtual clicker

Australian leading virtual corporate card expense management company, DiviPay, has released its Working From Home Has Killed the Office Credit Card whitepaper. The report provides an in-depth analysis of corporate card spend management in Australia, including new data on how the archaic methods of corporate expense management and reimbursements is contributing to growing employee dissatisfaction in the workplace. 

Insights include:

• Over a third of the employees surveyed (37%) admit to putting off work-related purchases to avoid out-of-pocket spending
• Almost half (47%) of Australian employees who’ve paid out of pocket in the last year admit to feeling anxious or worried about reimbursements.
• Over half (59%) of employees surveyed would prefer to work for a company that provides access to a corporate card.
• It explores corporate expense management difficulties and the delicate balance required for CFO control and confidence, employee flexibility and how many Aussie businesses aren’t getting it right 
• However, as the whitepaper highlights, in a time of inflation, tech layoffs and severe talent shortages, businesses need to be taking proactive measures to keep employees happy. 

Russell Martin, Co-Founder and CTO at DiviPay, says:

“I’ve met with many CEOs and CFOs in my time and there’s definitely a disconnect when it comes to the importance of a streamlined expense management process. Employee wellbeing and job satisfaction have catapulted up the priority list with many companies offering a myriad of perks to bolster culture, engagement, trust and productivity – yet somehow work reimbursements seem to slip the net. 

“Our research has shown that employees are experiencing high levels of anxiety when claiming back work expenses but this is something that is easily fixable. Having a robust, easy-to-use platform for corporate claims may seem like a small initiative but it can make all the difference to an employee’s job satisfaction and will be crucial for employee retention.”

You can find the full  WFH Has Killed the Office Credit Card report here.

Leading accounting software provider, APS (a division of Reckon [ASX:RKN]), has added the myprosperity client portal to its arsenal of integrations. With these new capabilities, accounting practices using APS now have access to a portal to help collaborate seamlessly with their clients.

Accounting firms across Australia and New Zealand not only use APS software for core practice management, but also as the single source of truth for storing client contact records. Many of these firms already use myprosperity to share documents and information; and to collaborate across all aspects of their clients’ financials.

Both Peter McCarthy CEO of myprosperity and Dave Francis General Manager of APS, recognised the alignment between their respective client bases and the mutual benefits for users in pairing the solutions.

“We are delighted to launch the integration of our market-leading client portal with APS,” said Mr McCarthy. “The integration will provide an opportunity for leading accounting firms to drive efficiencies, increase revenue, and redefine the client experience.”

“myprosperity is a fantastic addition for APS users to work even more efficiently with their clients,” agreed Mr Francis. “As this partnership brings client details into the myprosperity platform, it eliminates unnecessary data entry—without the integration, a practice would need to enter their client’s email address and mobile number manually to access myprosperity features.”

The partnership between APS and myprosperity also provides multidisciplinary firms a single portal to collaborate across a variety of services such as wealth management; business advisory; self-managed super funds; tax; and compliance.

“Over the past two years we have seen an explosion in app usage, highlighting the need for accountants to deliver a client portal experience with a strong focus on mobile,” noted Mr McCarthy. “With approximately 70 percent of current clients opting to collaborate with accountants via the myprosperity mobile app there has never been a better time for leading accounting firms to grow their digital brand.”

Adding myprosperity into APS’s ecosystem marks an important step towards a fully connected application stack to meet the needs of APS clients. The myprosperity application not only pairs seamlessly with APS, but also with its signature partners FuseWorks and Annature, along with two future integrations being planned with BGL and FYI. 

“Once activated, client details that are stored in APS will be shared to our integrated application stack, so any updates only need to be made once, then all the connected systems are updated automatically,” concluded Mr Francis.

The Reserve Bank’s decision to substantially increase the official interest rate is a wake-up call for the economy in which inflation is running well ahead of expectations.

“Inflation hurts everyone in the economy and so we understand the rationale behind today’s substantial interest rate rise,” Denita Wawn, CEO of Master Builders Australia said.

“However, while there is a need to temper the economy to tackle inflation there is also a need to maintain economic growth so that building and construction activity is not depressed,” she said.

“Building and construction have been the canary down the inflationary coal mine for the past six months. We have been dealing with cost increases for products and labour that have been well ahead of headline inflation figures and building approvals have been declining over the same period,” Denita Wawn said.

“There are more than 420,000 building and construction businesses that have been weathering the storm of inflation in advance of the rest of the economy while also shouldering much of responsibility for completing economic recovery,” she said.

“With the inflation challenge now facing the country it is important that the Federal Government makes use of both fiscal and monetary policy levers,” Denita Wawn said.

“Microeconomic reform must also be a focus, for example, the Federal Government can work to reduce the cost of creating new homes by tackling issues like land supply, regulation and the tax burden on new home building,” Denita Wawn said.

The B2B market is antiquated, lagging behind the B2C market by at least 10 to 12 years when it comes to eCommerce and digital transformation. Though a costly and time-consuming process, digital transformation for B2B is vital for the future.

The B2B digital transformation market is worth $5 billion and is a major focus for B2B over the next few years. Because of this, the Online Retailer Conference & Expo on July 20th – 21st, has created a separate B2B conference to focus on the challenges and solutions for B2B retailers.

Digitalisation has been fast-tracked as a result of the pandemic, placing increased pressure on the B2B market to transform its sales forces and offer more comprehensive eCommerce solutions.

Though some companies have achieved this to an extent, very few have reached the 80% digital transformation benchmark as it’s an ever-evolving target stemming from greater demand from customers for more digital options from their B2B suppliers.

Taking this digital transformation into account, the brand new B2B conference track offered by Online Retailer Conference & Expo is a dedicated pillar that will provide an insight on leveraging technology, innovations and the roadmap ahead, featuring thought-provoking discussions that take a deep dive into topics such as customer experience and the role of technology and partnerships in the growth of a B2B business.

Speakers include:

• James Bates, Acting Executive Director, NSW Department of Customer Service;
• Kirat Kahara, Head of eCommerce, Lenovo Australia & New Zealand;
• Susie Young, Head of Digital and Direct Marketing, Signet;
• Tarra van Amerongen, Head of Design – Jira Platform, Atlassian;
• Alice Fitch, Founder, wHOLA;

If you are a B2B considering a digital transformation or a vendor offering a solution for B2B, then this is a ‘must do’ event for you. Tickets are limited and are available to purchase here

Event Details:

Online Retailer Conference & Expo

20th – 21st July 2022

ICC Sydney

New research from a leading SME travel management provider has revealed the hopeful outlook Australian small-to-medium sized businesses have for their future recovery from COVID in 2023.

The findings were derived from a survey of an independent panel of 202 Australian SME[1] business owners, commissioned by Corporate Traveller, Flight Centre Travel Group’s SME business travel specialist division. The full survey results, across state and organisation sizes, can be found here corporatetraveller.com.au/resources/insights/sme-business-sector-recovery

From the survey, Corporate Traveller found just 22 per cent of businesses had not been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Among the businesses that have been impacted, one in three (32 per cent) said they expected to recover by the end of 2022, and one in three (33 per cent) in 2023.

One in four (23 per cent) revealed that their recovery would likely occur after 2023, while 11 per cent of businesses said they had already recovered. Just two per cent revealed they will never recover or had closed their business in the last two years.

Tom Walley, Global Managing Director for Corporate Traveller, says: “It’s promising to see that a high proportion of SMEs are hopeful for their recovery and are likely to bounce back over the next 18 months.

“Many SMEs experienced financial hardship or were forced to hibernate, and even close, during the pandemic. This also impacted our economy. However, with business success on the horizon, Australia’s economy can also enjoy a much-needed boost.” 

Businesses were also asked to identify the factors, from a list of 11, that they believe will aid their recovery. Australia’s economic recovery would have the biggest positive impact on SMEs, with this factor chosen by more than half (57 per cent) of respondents.

Thirty-eight (38) per cent of business owners said a return to travel would help their businesses recover, while 36 per cent said returning to the workplace to boost employee engagement and productivity would greatly aid their recovery.

Recruiting better and additional talent will help 31 per cent of SMEs, higher consumer confidence in the economy would help 30 per cent, and reduced inflation would assist 27 per cent, while better technology and Government stimulus would help 23 and 21 per cent of businesses, respectively.

Tom says: “Thanks to the recently announced Federal Budget, more SMEs will be able to tap into the very resources and assistance they said they needed to hasten their recovery.

“For instance, the Government will invest $21 billion in tax cuts to reduce the tax rate to the lowest level in five decades. Businesses will also be able to access new technologies and tax relief for training to upskill their employees.

“I also believe that a return to face-to-face communication will play an important role in the recovery, as do the 38 per cent of businesses who said they need to get back to travel to recover.

“Reinvigorating travel programs that were paused or investing more in travel this year will help drive sales and growth opportunities. As more countries open, businesses will also be able to recruit overseas talent and expand into new markets.

“Travel will be an important strategy for SMEs to consider in their recovery, whether they DIY their own travel or use a travel management provider to help navigate the new, complex environment.”

The full survey results, across state and organisation sizes, can be found here corporatetraveller.com.au/resources/insights/sme-business-sector-recovery

[1] Among the businesses surveyed, 32 per cent had 1-15 employees, 32 per cent had 16-50 employees, and 36 per cent had 51-200 employees.

Building on the success of its popular INKvestment line, Brother International Australia has announced the launch of its INKvestment Business Range, with five new A3 inkjet printers.
 
As Australian businesses work to bounce back from the pandemic¹and with 39% expecting the price of goods and services to increase in the coming months², prioritising value for money has never been more important, especially as we look to the new financial year.
 
Providing exceptional value, the MFC-J6555DW XL and MFC-J5855DW XL come with up to two years of Brother’s own premium pigment-based INKvestment inks in-box, dramatically reducing printing costs with up to 6,000 pages of black ink and 5,000 pages of colour ink. The MFC-J6957DW, MFC-J6955DW and MFC-J5955DW also meet the needs of businesses with up to one year of ink in-box. A two-year return-to-base warranty and free Australian-based customer support for the lifetime of the product also provide additional value.
 
As hybrid working practices continue globally, the INKvestment Business Range meets the needs of remote workers, allowing users to print and scan from any location with the Brother Mobile Connect app. Additional features, including scan to email, cloud storage and Optical Character Recognition (OCR), provide you with the flexibility required to keep working confidently.
 
For when you need to meet those important deadlines, the INKvestment Business Range delivers with the fastest-in-class first page out time of 4.4 seconds5, print speeds of up to 30 pages per minute6 (ppm) and single-pass, 2-sided (duplex) scanning on selected models. Paired with up to three paper trays supporting A3^C, the new range provides a fast, smooth, and sophisticated user experience that all businesses need.
 
Stefanie Matthews, Marketing Manager (Printing, Labelling & Mobile Solutions) at Brother International Australia said that the INKvestment Business Range has been designed with Australian businesses in mind.
 
“The modern business environment has changed drastically in the past two years. Roughly 40% of businesses remain in a cost-cutting mode⁷ because of the pandemic, while employees continue to demand workplace flexibility.
 
“These new models are the powerhouse INKvestment technology that Australian businesses need, providing outstanding value for money and the tools necessary to keep working effectively and efficiently, at home or in the office.”

Key features of the Brother INKvestment Business Range include:

Exceptional Value: Experience professional prints and exceptional value with up to 6,000 pages in black and up to 5,000 pages³ in colour provided in-box

Made for business: New ‘MaxiDrive’ Inkjet technology provides a premium long-life print head, fastest-in-class first page out time of 4.4 seconds and print speeds of up to 30 ppm

Print with confidence: Help take the guesswork out of when to replace ink with Page Gauge technology – see the amount of ink you’ve used and the amount of ink you have remaining

Designed for mobile: Experience the cleverly designed Brother Mobile Connect app, designed to connect to your Brother device to print, scan and manage documents on your smartphone

One-touch cloud connect: Print-from and scan-to popular cloud apps from the home or office, including Dropbox, Google Drive™, OneDrive and more

Simple to connect your way: Versatile connectivity options with dual-band (2.4GHz/5Ghz) Wireless Network support, Ethernet, WiFi Direct or USB

Brother at your side support: Free Australian-based support for the lifetime of your Brother device

Product pricing and availability

MFC-J6957DW RRP $879 October 2022

MFC-J6955DW RRP $679 May 2022

MFC-J6555DW XL RRP $899 May 2022

MFC-J5955DW RRP $599 May 2022

Warranty: Two-year return to base warranty
Website: www.brother.com.au

Also read Small Business Answers guide to buying a printer