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BT Tower, now a Grade II listed building (formerly known as the Post Office Tower) was originally opened to staff by Prime Minister Harold Wilson MP and the then Postmaster-General, Anthony Wedgwood Benn on Friday 8 October 1965.

Widely acclaimed, the Tower was Britain’s highest building, standing at 620 ft (189 metres), including a 40 ft (12 metre) lattice aerial on top of it, until the construction of the Nat West Tower which was completed in 1980. BT Tower is now the seventh tallest structure in London, the tallest being One Canada Square at Canary Wharf (completed in 1991) at 237 metres.

The Tower was initially designed to carry aerials for the Post Office microwave network. It was built so tall because the microwave signals need an unobstructed route between each station, clear of the highest buildings and surrounding hills. One of its key functions was to help meet the growing demands of broadcasting, enabling the use of microwaves instead of traditional landlines for transmitting television signals. It also attracted much attention and admiration for its ‘Top of the Tower’ revolving restaurant sited on the 34th floor. Revolutionary at the time, some 105,000 dined there during the first year of opening. Still in full working order today, the 3-metre wide revolving segment spins through 360º every 22 minutes, a speed of 0.17 km/h.

Forty years on, the Tower remains an important part of the BT network and handles around one million switched calls, around 3,000 a day. 99% of all live football and most terrestrial television passes through the BT Tower.

David Hay, Head of BT Heritage, comments: “The tower is an iconic symbol of London, that everybody immediately recognises and, though taller buildings now exist, it is viewed with great affection by the general public. Whilst declared a national monument in 2001 by English Heritage, and listed by the Government in 2003 as ‘a cultural and architectural icon of Harold Wilson's 'white heat of technology', it still plays as important a role in the UK’s communications as it did in 1965.”

Construction of the tower began in 1961, costing £2.5 million – a small sum by today’ standards. It weighs 13,000 tons, including 95 tons of high tensile steel in the base and 695 tons of mild steel in the structure, and contains 50,000 square feet of glass. It was designed to sway no more than 20 centimetres (almost 8 inches) each way in winds up to 100 mph. Heat and cold cause the structure to expand and contract. The BT Tower can be as much as 23 centimetres shorter in the winter than it is in the summer.

Originally open to the public, during its first year the Tower was visited by almost one million visitors and quickly became one of London’s most popular tourist attractions. Visitors were transported by the tower's two lifts, which are still among the fastest in Europe, travelling at 6 metres per second. During that first year alone the lifts travelled almost 70,000 kilometres. The BT Tower remains the only building in the country which is allowed to be evacuated by lift (an oddity which required Parliamentary legislation to be passed).

The Tower has had its fair share of dramatic events, not least of all on 31 October 1971 when a bomb exploded on the 31st floor. The result of the bombing was a tightening of security that left the Tower largely closed to the public on a permanent basis. However, the restaurant remained in operation until 1980, when that too was closed to the public for security reasons, except for hospitality events and charity fund-raising functions, such as Comic Relief and BBC television’s Children In Need fund-raiser that takes place every November.

The offer, which runs until December 31, continues BT’s commitment to take advantage of the lower costs of providing calls over the internet in order to offer much cheaper rates. Currently, the company offers calls to Australia with no call charges for up to one hour with BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger.

BT is also offering customers the chance to make BT Communicator calls from their laptops at 7,800 BT Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots without paying any access subscription or per-minute charges.

Gavin Patterson, BT group managing director, Consumer, said: “We were the first telecoms company to offer voice over internet two years ago and we intend to keep ahead of the game. There’s been a lot of hype about Skype, but these international calls are half their price. .

“We are not going to sit back while competitors lure our customers with cheap internet calls. We will fight for every customer by offering our own attractive prices for these calls. And with BT Communicator you can make the same call at a BT Openzone hotspot when you are out and about.

“Unlike traditional telephony, where we are heavily regulated, for internet telephony we can compete on an equal basis and offer customers the same advantages of low cost calls over the internet, but from a global, trusted brand.

“But customers need more than just cheap prices and we are confident that we can provide them with top quality calls with excellent customer service.”

From October 3, calls to 30 popular international destinations with BT Communicator, such as the United States, Australia, Spain and France will cost just 0.5p a minute. A 60 minute call to a US landline, which would cost 72p with Skype, would cost only 30p with BT.

With BT Communicator the cost is charged to your usual BT phone bill, whereas you would have to buy pre-paid credit with Skype. And BT uses their telephony experience to prioritise internet calls and ensure they are top quality.

Patterson added: “We believe voice calls over the internet are going to become much more prevalent in the future. There’s been a lot written about this being a threat to BT, but actually we see it as a great opportunity to offer customers a range of exciting new services in the future, like video calls and combining voice with text at the same time.

“This latest offer will be going out on email to millions of BT customers to try to encourage them to download the free BT Communicator with Yahoo! Messenger software and start making high quality cheap and easy calls.”

The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 tracks Britain's top-performing private companies and entrepreneurs on an annual basis. The category of Tech Track 100 ranks Britain's fastest growing technology companies based on sales growth over the last two years.

Daisy has experienced phenomenal growth over the past two years with figures of 458% annual growth from 2002 - 2004.

Daisy CEO Matthew Riley commented, “The company has produced unprecedented results in the four years we have been trading.

We are growing at a phenomenal rate and anticipate this year’s success to be even better than previous years. Our 2004 sales forecast was expected to take us through to 2007, but we met it in less than a year. Our number of employees has increased in line with our growth from just 12 employees in 2003 to 117 today, a trend we intend to continue in the future.

Daisy was built with a vision of delivering quality service, innovation, choice, and low prices to businesses across the UK. We can empower UK businesses to achieve their objectives with the aid of the technology based services that we are able to offer.

The award is by far our most prestigious yet. Everyone at daisy has contributed to the success and we are all delighted to be named as the fastest growing technology company in the country. We are looking forward to another record breaking year.”

Over a half of the 1,000 companies surveyed said they outsource some or all of their network infrastructure, yet four in ten of those that do (41%) are unable to estimate the resulting cost savings. This situation is likely to further hinder board-level IT investment decisions, according to Telindus marketing director, Danny Williams.

"There must be clear metrics in place to justify any IT or network outsourcing spend in order to better track its value to the business and avoid a disconnect with senior management," says Williams. "Cost is a key factor, but it's not the only one. IT managers also need to consider the strategic value of network outsourcing in terms of network stability and the measuring of business productivity improvements as a whole."

Telindus' research also found that, despite an increase in network outsourcing, trust is still an issue for companies looking to take advantage of its benefits. The most frequently stated reason for not outsourcing was 'I want to be in control of my network infrastructure.' (54%). One in eight companies went as far as saying that they wouldn't trust a third party with their network.

"It's natural to feel apprehensive about outsourcing the network or IT functions, but any outsourcing relationship must be flexible and collaborative," says Williams. "The successful companies lay down clear boundaries at the start of a network outsourcing partnership and set SLAs that reflect the business environment. In this way they can reap the productivity and cost benefits of outsourcing without losing management control. "What this independent research tells us is that overall, whilst there is still a degree of reticence to outsourcing per se, forward-thinking companies are more and more ready to consider the outsourcing of operationally mature elements such as network management, as this enables them the time to consider strategy and policy such as the introduction of IPT," he concludes.

Fully integrated with the Samsung range of systems such as OfficeServ, CMS is highly scalable, from small businesses on the OfficeServ 12 platform, right up to the large multi-site enterprise. A full new range of supporting material for resellers is available at www.samsungbusiness.com, including a CMS sales guide, personal productivity sales guide, technical bulletin and updated product configurator.

Improvements in this latest version of CMS include Samsung’s “ease of deployment” concept for Multi-site roll-out. With its easy installation wizard, growing companies can install and link up CMS at other sites quickly and easily.

Unlike other standard products, Samsung CMS is not a passive reporting tool. The Samsung CMS takes an active role: as well as showing in real time and in a very visual graphical format what is happening on the system, important information can be emailed to any destination on any customer-set alarm threshold that is exceeded.

The new alarm module allows supervisors to configure the system to alert them, by SMS, email or even flashing light, whenever a call breaches a certain threshold of their choice – for example calls lost or calls above a certain duration.

The wallboard offers a host of new benefits by displaying key statistics such as successful calls and team performance figures on a large screen on the wall. The agent view function allows managers to view, on a single screen, a real-time display of each phone operator’s performance. The system can also be tailored to include as advanced a set of statistics as required, including number and duration of calls, operator availability, teams versus other teams and reports from other sites.

Samsung CMS delivers a range of software-based applications that create real business benefits including greater staff efficiency, reduction of costs, more effective customer service and maximised return on existing and future IT investment.

There are four distinct software packages allowing any company to select the most appropriate and cost-effective solution to meet their requirements. These range from CMS Professional Multi-site down to CMS Lite – an entry-level application for single sites. With modular add-on features, however, customers can upgrade their system whichever level they have started from.

Commenting, product manager Wilfred Wood said, “We have listened to our customers and have built in additional features that call centres were requesting. We have also structured the pricing so that users only pay for the functions they want to use. Even if they run multiple sites with large numbers of operators, but do not require full detailed monitoring and reporting, they pay according to functions, not just size. CMS was already a competitive package but with its new version we think we’re on to a winner.”

That’s the finding of leading communications and technology company Azzurri Communications, which offers businesses a free audit that will identify where efficiency and cost savings can be made across their telecoms infrastructure.

Azzurri has audited 1,200 corporate UK customers with a combined telecoms spend of £300m per year and has identified £60m worth of achievable savings across all these companies. Based on the fact that there are approximately 4,800 large corporates in the UK, British businesses are wasting £240m on excess telecoms spend.

“Most companies don’t make regular checks on how they are using their telephones, whether they are paying the cheapest rates or if they are continuing to pay for unused lines,” said Azzurri Communications’ managing director Central Region, Jason Standerwick.

“We also see an incredible amount of employee abuse of company phone systems. One of our customers employed a security officer who had run up a bill of £8,000 calling relatives living overseas - and this is far from uncommon.

“Another member of staff employed by a national car dealership was running up high bills due to him operating a separate business in his employer’s time.”

Another major finding of the survey is that most companies are committed to buying services on price and seek out the best pence-per-minute (PPM) deal from their network provider. However, they neglect fixed costs such as people, line rental, equipment rental and maintenance costs.

“It’s like having really cheap petrol and making unnecessary trips. Why do people in the US drive big SUV and Cadillacs and drive everywhere? Because the petrol is cheap. It's the same principle here. As long as people think that they are getting really cheap PPM rates, they think they are saving money. What they don't look at is whether their employees are making unnecessary calls or wasting money on rental for lines that they don't use,” continued Standerwick.

The key findings from Azzurri’s audits are:

- 6 out of 10 companies are on the wrong tariff - 9 out of 10 companies could save money by switching provider -10 out of 10 companies are paying for unused telephone lines -10 out of 10 companies could benefit from tighter control on telephone usage.

House-builder George Wimpey is one of the first companies to have benefited from the audit process. George Wimpey’s operations demand the frequent opening and closing of site offices and show homes as developments progress. “Working with Azzurri we have eliminated ‘forgotten lines’, reduced fixed-to-mobile call costs, removed unauthorised premium rate and international calls and raised awareness among staff of the true costs of making calls,” said Jolyon Ingham, IT director, George Wimpey UK.

The survey was conducted among 100 UK decision makers by Omniboss in August 2005. These recent findings suggest that over 45% of British business consider their contact centre to be a cost centre and drain on resources. Whereas only a small majority (18%) felt their call centre was a profit centre and actually played a vital role in the overall corporate strategy.

Call centres are a necessity as an essential part of business and the customer’s first interface to any organisation. However, in the UK there seems to be a reluctance to invest and embrace new generation call centre technologies in order to improve customer service.

Wicom found over half of UK businesses buck the IP trend with a physical based centre. Most (60%) see the advantages of migrating to an IP based model, but the shift hasn’t happened, suggesting decision makers don’t fully understand the long term benefits of an IP-based call centre model. Ali Shirnia, VP of Global Sales and Marketing, Wicom explains, “UK’s reluctance to invest in the IP model is largely due to limited budgets tied with heavy investment in hardware and proprietary systems. However what they may not understand is that if they adopt an IP model, the phased migration to the new technology will allow businesses to utilise their existing ICT investments and entire business infrastructure more efficiently.”

Cost savings and ease of deployment form a compelling argument. However the multiple benefits of IP include easier multimedia routing and queuing, remote agent deployment, multi-channel integration, and multi-site virtualisation. For instance, during periods of peak demand, overflow can be routed to home-based workers in real time, irrespective of country location or time zones, with some calls even being routed to a company’s offices during off-peak periods significantly improving worker utilisation and productivity.

IP based telephony is one of the fastest growing technologies in Europe, bringing revitalisation to call centre markets in regions like the Nordics and Eastern Europe. In fact, a radically new customer service model has emerged, where IP based technology is changing the way businesses are aligning their call centre within their corporate strategy. And with this, the evolution of a new call centre model coined as ‘Straight Through Communications’.

This new model allows customer calls to be prioritised and routed straight through to the experts. This eliminates the need for unnecessary call forwards at the first line of agents and optimises the match of customer needs and expert skills. For instance, employees can provide “traffic light” notices via their mobile devices which notify call centre routing logic, switchboard operators and colleagues about their current availability for service queues. Similarly, when travelling, users can route service calls and personal contacts to their mobile phone or to a selected team of specialists to ensure that customer requests are resolved in the most immediate manner. All information is accessible by switchboard, contact centre operators and company employees, improving availability and call resolution by as much as 20%.

Wicom was early to recognize the potential in IP-based call centre applications. It maintains its strength in the Nordic market but is beginning to achieve greater visibility with service providers such as BT Infonet, T-Systems and BT Global Services in Germany and is working with key organisations such as Fujitsu Services, the Finland Post Group and Premiere.

Matrix say these projects, valued at almost £1 million combined, will realise significant financial savings for the Trusts and enable them to provide cost-effective advanced communications services to small branch practices and individual home workers for the first time.

“The new Mitel VoIP system enables the Islington Primary Care Trust to benefit in a variety of ways. We now have enhanced features and better sound quality and we are finding it easier and quicker to provide and support new telephone services with a more resilient system. Most importantly, our staff will benefit from mobile working and home working capabilities with the new solution,” said Andy McClintock, Director of ICT Shared Services at Islington Primary Care Trust. “In addition to these benefits, we are also seeing cost savings with the IPT system as we disengage from our legacy managed service contract using BT FeatureNet and embark upon a pan Trust modernisation of our wide area network infrastructure”

“At Whittington Hospital, we wanted to improve the telecommunications services for patients and staff and we saw VoIP as a promising solution,” said Andi King, Telecommunications Services Manager, Whittington Hospital. “Upgrading our PBX system would not have allowed us the improved services we wanted for our patients, the flexibility and functionality the Mitel IP Telephony offers, enables us to meet our improved service goals,” said King.

“The Trusts are realising the many benefits of deploying VoIP – mainly cost and usability for the thousands of people using the new systems,” said Neil Sturgess, Head of Voice for Matrix Communications. “With the IPT solutions, the Trusts can ensure patient support and care is improved, home working is more feasible for staff and operating costs are lower than ever before.”

The Solutions feature greater network availability, reduced cost and enhanced voice applications

The Camden and Islington solution is based upon the Mitel 3300 Integrated Communications Platform (ICP) and is provided by Matrix Communications along with a range of IP Phones and management tools. The Mitel 3300 ICP supports over 500 telephony features for the Trusts, enabling mobile working for staff members, better call quality and greater network availability at a reduced cost.

The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust solution is based upon the Mitel 3300 LX controller platform, provided by Matrix Communications, and will cover 2,500 users with IP phones and features within the hospital over the next three to four years. The flexibility, ability to develop services and migrate smoothly are benefits the hospital is already realising.

Actimax, based at Basildon in Essex, has recently won an array of awards for its quality service to customers but this time it has been rewarded for how it trains and motivates its staff. It won the Small Company Award at the first learndirect Regional Achievement in Learning (REAL) Awards. Actimax Director Sharon Massey was presented with the East of England Development Agency-sponsored award by Fame Academy singing coach David Grant.

The judging panel was impressed by Actimax’s determination to ensure all staff had access to training opportunities. Each year the company allocates a £50,000 budget to ensure all staff get the appropriate training to develop their skills and expand on their capabilities.

Ms Massey cites a case in which a member of staff was re-energised by the offer of training for another role within Actimax. She said: “One of our receptionists was becoming disillusioned with the limitations of her job. We didn’t want to lose her experience and skills, so we encouraged her to up-skill and gave her the opportunity to do some training with learndirect. “She really rose to the challenge, and now she’s in charge of managing the websites for the company and is much happier in her role.

“We strongly believe that by investing in employees’ training and personal development, we’re investing in the company. It helps us retain and motivate staff, and gets the best out of the people who work at Actimax.”

Actimax staff are all encouraged to undertake learndirect courses in spreadsheets, word processing and databases to a nationally recognised qualification. Ms Massey added: “The idea is that our employees get to add to their CV and we get the benefit of their improved IT expertise and efficiency.”

Rachel Dunn, Project Manager at the Basildon Foyer Bisi Centre, the learndirect centre where Actimax staff undertake their training, said: “Actimax fully understands that employees require ongoing training and development to maintain their enthusiasm, motivation and performance. The results speak for themselves.”

Hilary Clifford, Head of Ufi East, added: “For small or medium-sized businesses, the expense and time involved in training can make it extremely difficult to fit in. Actimax is a great example of a business showing enthusiasm and commitment.”

Organised by Ufi, the company behind learndirect, the REAL Awards are designed to celebrate the achievements of learners, employers and learndirect learning centres across the East of England.

The two solutions, TASKE Contact and myTASKE Reporter, from TASKE Technology, offer business analysis and reporting tools, providing complete visibility of the contact centre environment. Businesses can monitor and manage resources in real-time, and dynamically respond to changes in customer demand to optimise resources and ensure service levels are successfully delivered. “Business today is growing ever more customer-focused, making the contact centre central to the success of many organisations. Our partnership with TASKE gives customers insight into and control over this vital resource,” explains Tim Webb, general manager of Toshiba BCD. “The TASKE reporting tools provide a detailed real-time view of the customer experience and the resource available, allowing managers to fine tune the contact centre to improve business communications and control operational costs.” TASKE Contact is designed for the formal contact centre environment with up to 360 agents. It provides real-time reporting on key contact centre resources – agents and queues – giving managers the ability to respond immediately to changing call volume and agent availability. This helps ensure service levels are continually monitored and make the business more responsive.

Additional features include: - Remote browser-based management capabilities - Cradle-to-grave reporting of all calls - Adjustable replay of ACD activity myTASKE Reporter is an informal contact centre solution for up to 50 agents. It has over 150 standard reports to monitor service levels, agent performance, or trends in call volume which can be viewed from any internet connection via a secure browser-based system.

Further features include: - Historical reporting on agents, queues, extensions and trunks - Views of every inbound, outbound, and extension-to-extension call - Call management on all extensions whether agent phones or not Both solutions benefit from TASKE Call Visualizer, which allows managers to review and improve the customer experience. It provides a unique timeline of every call handled. Managers can then drill down into each event of every call, to see the amount of time a caller was on hold or the number of times a caller was transferred, to gain a granular view of call handling techniques. The two TASKE solutions are available for the complete Toshiba Strata CTX and CIX PBX range, and complement Toshiba’s existing management system, Insight. The TASKE Management solutions are available immediately.

The new OfficeServ 7200 offers businesses a complete solution for mission-critical communications. In addition to a no-compromise voice solution it is pre-configured for converged data communications and includes a fully featured security firewall, intrusion detection/prevention, policy manager and packet shaper.

OfficeServ 7200 is being shown for the first time at the Convergence Summit 2005 from 6–7 September and its launch marks a significant milestone in the development of Samsung’s portfolio. This state of the art solution will be welcomed by voice resellers looking to tap further into the enormous potential of the data side of the converged market. By deploying both a firewall and an intrusion detection/prevention system (IDS) the OfficeServ7200 is particularly strong on network security. The IDS not only monitors network traffic but reports attempted security breaches to the network manager by way of an alarm.

In addition to the WIM module the LAN Interface Module (LIM) can be operated either as a managed layer 3 or an unmanaged layer 2 switch. In either case the technology means that voice will always be automatically prioritised over data connections, so even if the user’s system is experiencing heavy data traffic, OfficeServ 7200 will optimise the quality of all voice calls.

The OfficeServ 7200 of course also provides all of the telephony features and rich functionality necessary for mobility solutions and home working that Resellers have come to expect from Samsung’s OfficeServ suite. All current handsets and application software are supported, there is the option of using SIP, H.323(v4), Spnet and signalling. The system is rack mountable and all interfaces presented at the front of the 7200 are RJ45. Voicemail and auto-attendant functionality is provided with the SVMi20e module and a new 16 port combination module provides 8 DLI and 8 SLI interfaces for a flexible mix of digital and analogue extensions.

OfficeServ 7200 can also be programmed via a web browser and is designed to exchange alarm information with a system manager and to have software upgraded through HTTP and TFTP.

In short the OfficeServ 7200 enables enterprises and their employees to securely access the full range of internal IT systems over a non-secure network. Commenting on the new launch, sales and marketing director Ali Zartash-Lloyd said: “We are very excited by this latest example of leading edge technology from Samsung. It offers huge opportunities for Samsung resellers to enter lucrative new markets, allowing both data and voice specialist resellers to diversify into the brave new world of convergence.”

Hot spots allow travellers’ to access the internet through antennae in their laptop computers, but many users are failing to take advantage of the technology.

The study found a staggering 75% said they welcome the chance to be out of contact while travelling.

The teaming with Global Crossing enables the delivery of IP voice services on the Global Crossing MPLS-based global IP network. The network was designed for the convergence of voice, video and data and delivers services to 500 cities around the world. This high quality IP network infrastructure enables the delivery of the TeleWare feature-rich intelligent communications services for IP Connectivity, IP Centrex Voice Services and value-added application services such as personal numbering, manager/secretary working, unified communications and team working.

“Large enterprises have enjoyed the benefits of IP Telephony and applications for many years. Now, by bringing together IP networking and hosted services into a compelling package, we are bringing these same benefits to medium and small enterprises,” said Anthony Christie, Global Crossing Chief Marketing Officer. “We are delighted to be able to offer resellers a true business-class hosted service that provides their end-users with the resilience and breadth of application features they require today and which is flexible enough to cater for future requirements.”

Steve Haworth, Group Strategy Director for TeleWare Plc, said, “For the SME, this solution reduces capital expenditure and enables the company to grow at a predictable ongoing cost without having to worry about upgrading or replacing their PBX. Outsourcing the management of the hardware reduces the demands on busy IT and telecom staff. The customer gains the added advantage of carrier grade resilience without the need to make resilient design decisions and cope with the related cost penalties. 2005 will be the year that IP Centrex hosted services for business finally arrives.”

The TeleWare IP Telephony and application services are delivered across the Global Crossing network to customers from TeleWare’s secure hosted facilities in Docklands and based on TeleWare’s intelligent eXchange SIP-based architecture utilising the standard, proven TeleWare applications: intelligent Office, intelligent Number, intelligent Assistant and intelligent Message Centre. Billing and auto provisioning is provided by TeleWare Hosted Services on behalf of Global Crossing through a fully automated system and web based interface. The Global Crossing Hosted IP Voice™ service is available through resellers and ISPs focused on the enterprise market.

The upgraded RailNet platform will provide cost-effective, seamless communications for voice, intranet, local-area network, wide-area network and public network traffic using IP-based communications. Ericsson will be responsible for technical collaboration, design, project management and the integration of its MD110 Converged Communication System.

When fully deployed the MD110 systems installed in RailNet will integrate fixed and mobile telephony, IP phones, PC soft phones, cordless phones, mobile phones, digital phones and IP gateways. Additionally, 120 existing MD110 systems will be upgraded to provide advanced facilities.

Phil Metcalf, managing director of Global Crossing UK, said: "This significant investment demonstrates Global Crossing's continued commitment to evolve RailNet into a fully converged IP platform that offers the entire rail community a flexible set of secure offerings and new service applications that satisfy the safety-critical nature of the rail business."

Jonathan Smith, Vice President of Ericsson Enterprise division in the UK and Ireland, said: "This contract from Global Crossing is another clear indication of Ericsson's continued commitment to the enterprise sector. Ericsson offers advanced, best-in-class solutions, backed up with the technical ability, strategic view and vision to evolve its customers into an all-IP world."

Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world.

Only one in 20 said they are at their most productive state after 3 p.m.

Nearly half said they work best from home, which surveyor Your Communications argued could spell the death of the traditional 9 to 5 working day.

Allowing staff to work flexibly from home at hours best-suited to their capabilities, firms can dramatically boost their productivity, the business services firm said.

In addition, the report stated that flexible working schemes bring "obvious benefits" that employers must consider, such as strengthening staff loyalty and improving the work-life balance of their staff.