It’s green week at Landmark!

As a group we are being encouraged to raise awareness of green topics to help improve our approach to sustainability and the environment.

Landmark’s Exeter offices are located on an Industrial Estate, not the first place you’d think of as being particularly green. However, a quick walk around will have you running into all sorts of wildlife hiding among the verdant roadsides, dotted between warehouses and office blocks.

This time of year is a prime period for native and migratory butterfly and moth species, the hedgerows around Landmark’s offices are full of bramble flowers, thistles and flowering buddleia and the balmy temperatures are ideal for emerging butterflies.

As part of a concerted effort to conserve and preserve UK butterflies we can all contribute by signing up to the big butterfly count.

http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/

This kicks off this Friday (18^th July) and runs for just over a month.

Last year’s count has provided the projects most successful results to date and mobile technology means that each year’s survey is more and more accessible.

It’s a good excuse to get out in the sun and spend 15 minutes chasing butterflies, just ignore the strange looks you may receive as you peer into a hedge, it’s worth it if you catch a glimpse of a rare or endangered species.

You don’t need a reason to do this beyond the simple pleasure of interacting with your environment but the count itself is hugely important as a conservation project and, much to our pleasure, emphasises the need for good data.

For more information on butterfly conservation please visit http://butterfly-conservation.org/

And if you want to find out where to go to spot some butterflies Landmark can provide details of….

• 24 butterfly farms from our Points of Interest dataset.
• Over 6,000 sites of special scientific interest, many of which are home to rare and protected butterfly and moth species.

A newly emerged Peacock butterfly taking a breather

A large White, snapped on the Exe estuary

Daniel Lewis Carter

Data Information Co-Ordinator

Landmark Information Group

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Recycling old football pitches

In honour of the 2014 World Cup final, BBC’s Countryfile team recently met the locals who have turned the old Swansea football pitch, Vetch Field, into a haven of growing and community spirit.

A year long project that started in September 2011, commissioned by Adain Avion, Cultural Olympiad Wales, Vetch Field was a defunct sports and music venue has been converted into a community garden/allotment. 

Over 100 Beds fill the 2,500 metre sq. site, where members of the community, families, organisations, churches, retirement centres and charities can grow their own food. The site also contains a kitchen, numerous communal beds and polytunnels. The gardeners care for the site, learn bee keeping, and cob oven building skills as well as keeping chickens and preparing food in the kitchen.

The garden has become a centre of community, where cultures, neighbours and families meet and tend their plots, swap recipes and share meals.

As part of our DMGT Green Week, we took this opportunity to look into our data. Did you know…

• We hold over 300 planning application features relating to the development of allotments
• Our local plan data identifies over 2,100 land allocations for allotments, existing and proposed
• OS Mastermaps identify almost 18,000 allotments across Great Britain
• Our Points of Interest Data shows:
• Over 2,500 points of interest that detail horticultural services
• Over 7,800 points of interest that detail gardening, landscaping and tree surgery services
• Over 1,800 community projects and networks

Sunshine Saturday: Farming at Landmark

It turns out that only having five days in DMGT Green Week is just not enough so we had to create an extra day called Sunshine Saturday where we can take a look at the Farmers in our group - the Product Managers.

There are many dimensions to the life of our Farmer: the first of which is the shepherd. Like many organisations we have a flock of existing products out there in the field; some of them are young and need to be watched over to ensure they don't get into difficulties and some are older and may be in need of TLC. The shepherd's job is to keep an eye on all the livestock; protected from extreme weather and keep safe from predators. Our existing products need a looking after too to ensure they are kept healthy and ahead of the competition.

As well as looking after existing animals, farmers also need to ensure that future demand can be met. This involves sowing the seeds of next year's crops; nurturing them to ensure that they are properly watered, kept free from weeds and pests and given adequate nutrition. Product Managers have a similar job to ensure that we have new products that may start off as unpromising seedlings but can grow into healthy new and profitable products that provide new value to our customers.

Many farmers now make use of Farmers' Markets where they can sell their produce directly to the consumers. There are benefits to this on both sides as for the consumer, products are fresher and often sourced locally and for the farmer there is the opportunity to make a higher margin by having fewer intermediaries between them and the consumer. Product Managers seek out opportunities in markets adjacent to our existing ones and those where we can provide opportunities further along the workflow than our traditional products take us.

Like all successful farmers a Product Manager needs to look for ways to diversify. Farmers will look to exploit opportunities in new markets, for example, crops suitable for bio-fuels; organic crops or non-native animals such as Ostrich and Alpaca. Many farmers have turned to the tourist trade to offer farm holidays, Bed and Breakfast or campsite as new ways to maximise the resources they have available. Identifying opportunities in related areas can provide excellent new sources of revenue.

 

Jonathan Eversett
Senior Business Analyst

e-billing by numbers (and saving the planet!)

As part of our Corporate Responsibility programme and to support our DMGT Group goal to reduce our carbon footprint by 10% by 2015, this week (14^th to 18^th July 2014) sees the launch of ‘Green Week’.  The aim is to raise awareness of sustainability and climate change related topics, as well as to educate us all on how we can ‘be green’.

DMGT has successfully cut its carbon footprint by 25% over the last six years and we at Landmark have played an important part in this.  Initiatives such as installing solar panels on our roof, our car share scheme, travel plan and cycle-to-work policies, plus using video conferencing facilities have all worked towards reducing our CO₂ emissions and environmental impact. 

Here, Jenny Millman, Credit Control Manager at Landmark, talks about the recent programme of work that saw the transfer of our customer invoicing to e-billing.

“Our Promap team got the ball rolling.  A dedicated project team (spread throughout the business including sales and marketing, IT Dev, customer services and finance) was assembled and tasked with the implementation of electronic billing for Promap customers.

The following six months involved the gathering of customer requirements, project planning, data cleansing and a “Go Green” campaign promoting sign-up. On average, we now send a total of 18,000 Promap invoices and statements per month by email.

90% of all billing is paperless, which means prompt delivery of invoices to customers on day one, instead of second class mail delays, resulting in quicker payment for us and an improved service for our customers. We include a Worldpay link with our invoices, so that customers can pay on-line, without having to post cheques or remittance details to us, thus making an even greater resource saving.

Following on from the success with Promap, and in response to customer feedback, we released Landmark e-billing for Legal and Environmental reports in October 2012. We now send a further 7,000 invoices and statements electronically each month.

 

In October 2013, e-billing also went live for our sister company Argyll Environmental Ltd.

This project means that we now print and despatch around 400,000 fewer pieces of paper every year and the cost savings so far total more than £0.5million.  e-billing is a great example of saving money and saving the planet!”