Newsletter - Things are looking up
In this week's newsletter:
Thank you!
Business looking up
This week's projects
Doing your bit
Thank You!
The response to our fee survey this year has been fantastic, so thanks to all of you who participated or passed the survey on to your contacts. As well as our own database, the survey was sent out by a number of our partners, reaching well over 40,000 consultants and freelancers in total, making this the most comprehensive survey we've done.
Incidentally, we have discount arrangements with a number of partner organisation so if you belong to any of AMED, IBC, PCG, IMechE, UKITA or NRG have a look at our partners page to see how to take advantage when you join up.
Business looking up
The wider distribution of this year's survey means it's quite hard to compare year on year - the average rate is down about 8% (neatly balancing out the 7.5% rise from the year before) - but there's a larger proportion of people working mainly through agencies in the sample, which I'd expect to depress their rates by around 15%. Perhaps more interesting is the 'top 20' of specialisms versus rates - if you take a look at the full results you'll see that specialisms associated with Finance and Retail have suffered more than most - whereas rates in more general areas have help up fairly well.
The best news though is that well over half of you expect revenue to stay the same or increase this year, and since you're the people in closest contact to real businesses I'm inclined to believe you rather than the pundits!
This week's projects
Plenty of interesting projects this week, don't forget that once your 3 month trial finishes you won't receive project alerts and we only include a small selection in the newsletter. We will send you a reminder but if you want to make sure you don't miss out why not join now?
Design new enterprise architecture , London
Sales and Marketing for Computer Vision Systems , South West
Learning & Development Consultants (UK)
Branding and design for young person's charity,Greater London
Tendering Opportunity: Trust Fundraiser, London
Website Technical Development , West Midlands
Telephone survey of employers and businesses, West Midlands
Arts Organisational Development Review, North West England
Coaching for High Growth, North East England
Market Research for Hydrogels, South East
Evaluation of ESF Programme, South East
Five year strategic plan for Farm Park,Home Counties
Tourism Income Generation Plan Consultancy, North West England
Business Support Consultancy for Community Asset Transfer, North West England
Intranet Design, Build and Migration, London
Collaborative Business Modelling Project, Wales
Key Performance Indicator Engine Management, North East England
Web Manager, 6 month fixed term,Greater London
Improving commissioning and procurement of social workers , West Midlands
E-Learning Project,Yorkshire
training for the institute of leadership management (ILM) qualification , South East
housing related health and safety consultancy services, South Coast
Engineering Design Study, United Kingdom
Corporate Communications , South West
Doing your bit
One of the questions we asked in the survey was whether you'd been asked to work for free. From your answers it's clear that many of you are happy to help deserving causes (though you're much less charitable towards those just trying to skim some extra margin). I've mentioned here before how impressed I am at the amount of charitable work so many self-employed people do - but Steve Davey has taken it one step further and is doing a Ski Marathon for charity and using the opportunity to make new business contacts. He's offering people who donate to SCOPE the chance to win a free marketing health-check as well as feeling good about themselves!