Speaking Sensis

 

This announcement was made as part of our Commitment to Climate Change, which details how we’ll play our part in combating climate change from by: managing our footprint, working with our suppliers, leading in product stewardship, supporting small business and connecting Australians.

Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst said: “With this announcement, the millions of Australians who use our directories each week can be assured Sensis is committed to playing our part in combating climate change and working to reduce our carbon emissions.”

February was a busy month, which also saw the launch of the refreshed Sensis in the Community program, which was first introduced in 2006. Following the external review, the new program now includes 20 new Payroll Giving partners, which were selected as the top 20 charities Sensis employees donated to. When employees donate money to one of our partners, Sensis matches the donations dollar-for-dollar at the end of the financial year.

Other new features of the Sensis in the Community program include a more user-friendly volunteer leave process, national partnerships formed focusing on small businesses and conservation, and emergency relief partnerships with The Red Cross and The Salvation Army.

Our sustainability initiatives were recognised by our 2009/10 Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) result, with Sensis achieving a 2009 CRI Gold band score of 92.51% recording a 13.07% improvement from our Bronze band score of 79.44% in 2008.

Looking forward
There are lots of exciting initiatives planned for 2011, including our transition to the Australian Government endorsed carbon neutral certification of our print and online directories. This will be obtained through the Australian Carbon Trust under the National Carbon Offset Standard. Other initiatives include introducing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper stock for the paper used within the print directories as well as more sustainable packaging systems.

We’re also developing an Environmental Management System (EMS) compliant to International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) 140001, to help identify and manage negative impacts on the environment and subsequently improve our environmental performance.

We will also be releasing a Triple Bottom Line report, detailing the economic contribution, environmental impact and social value of the Yellow Pages and White Pages directories.

Assurance

The report has been independently assured by Environmental Resources Management Australia (ERM), which has been prepared to A+ standard, as defined in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 application level. This is the second one of our Sustainability reports that has been independently assured by ERM using the AA1000 principles.

You can download the complete 2010 Sensis Sustainability Report from our corporate site. If you have any questions or feedback, email the Sensis Sustainability team.

It’s been a busy year so far for the international directories industry and this was evidenced at Kelsey’s annual Directional Media Strategies (DMS) Conference in Dallas, Texas and the European Association of Directories Publishers (EADP) 2010 Congress in Venice, Italy. 

Sensis Chief Operating Officer Gerry Sutton and GM Strategy Geoff Avard were in Venice to steer the Sensis gondola while our GM Product Thomas Arthur and GM Marketing, Michelle Sherwood donned the spurs in Texas. 

Now back on Aussie turf, Gerry commented that it was exciting to see the shift in overall industry sentiment since he attended the Yellow Pages Association conference in the US in April. The vibe’s more buoyant and upbeat as many organisations have set clear strategies for the future and new shoots of growth are appearing.

As part of a panel session discussing Transformational Experiences alongside Mark Cannon of Yell and Olivier Vincent of Ziplocal, Gerry provided the EADP Congress delegates with a high-level view of the key improvements Sensis is making to customer experience.

Two themes consistently came through at the event. The first is that Yellow Pages® is in a very strong position to act as a trusted advisor to small to medium enterprises and help them manage their multi-channel advertising presence and performance in a changing world. The second is the need to provide advertisers with sophisticated reporting on the leads that we generate in order to demonstrate accountability and return on investment to our customers. 

What are some of the other trends being adopted by our European counterparts? There’s a strong emphasis on offering customers multi-channel directories products while also partnering or acting as a reseller for performance networks like Google, website companies and social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. Product portfolios are being expanded to mini websites and landing pages. These strategies are paying off with some businesses expanding digital penetration by 20-30 per cent in a short timeframe, with plans to grow paying digital customers to up 80 per cent. The structure of print books is also being constantly improved and new content is being added to enhance usability. And there’s still an unwavering belief that salesforces continue to be a critical strength and training and investing in people is paramount.

Across the Atlantic at Kelsey DMS, there was a similar focus on managing the digital presence of small to medium enterprises. Michelle Sherwood observed that directories companies around the world are busy building large digital product pipelines whilst continuing to innovate and re-format print products.  

The growth being experienced in mobile traffic was another hot topic at Kelsey DMS, with many businesses quoting around 20 per cent of traffic to directories sites coming from mobile. We’re already exceeding this at Sensis, reflecting Australia’s high adoption rates for mobile search.

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Every August, Telstra reports its annual financial results for the financial year to June (FY10). And that, of course, means Sensis reports as well. So I’m pleased to use this opportunity to give you a brief rundown of our FY10 performance.

First, I’m pleased to say that Sensis has delivered growth (adjusted) in what has been a very challenging year.

On an adjusted basis, Sensis’ EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation) grew by 2.4% to $1.21 billion. This was based on revenue of $2.19 billion (up 1.0%) and expenses pre depreciation and amortisation of $982m (down 0.6%).

I should explain what we mean by ‘adjusted’. During the year, a number of extraordinary items impacted our financial position. These were the transfer of Trading Post to Telstra, the sale of Universal Publishers, the acquisition two businesses in China and the impact of the falling Australian dollar on our China revenue. All of these items have a ‘one off’ impact on our FY10 results. To get to an ‘apples with apples’ comparison between this year and last year, we need to adjust for the impact of these one-off items.

Digging a bit deeper, I found four things really encouraging about our FY10 performance.

A solid performance in a tough year for SMEs and the advertising industry
The first is that Sensis was able to grow in a very tough year. We were operating in markets that were heavily affected by the global financial crisis – both in Australia and China.

Throughout the 2009 calendar year the Australian main media market experienced what may have been the largest decline in its history. The overall market (including online) declined by 8% for the year, while print media specifically declined by 13%(1). In contrast, our Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print revenue declined by 5.1%: a strong result considering that almost all this revenue was earned during the 2009 calendar year.

At the same time, Australia’s SMEs (who make up the bulk of our customer base) registered some of the lowest confidence levels in the history of the Sensis Business Index during this period. And, while confidence has partially recovered, it is still very patchy.

SME perceptions of the economy fell from +50% (i.e. more SMEs with a positive perception) in late 2007 to -72% in early 2009, when the Yellow Pages® FY10 metro canvass was being sold. Perceptions rose in late 2009 (Yellow Pages® non metro canvass), before falling again in May this year: from +24% to -1% in just one quarter(2).

Yellow Pages® remains the growth engine for Australian SMEs… now and into the future
The second notable element of this year’s result was the continued strength of Yellow Pages®.

Yellow Pages® sole focus is on driving sales leads to hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses, most of which are small to medium enterprises. And while this core purpose hasn’t changed, the way we deliver leads has evolved enormously.

These days, Yellow Pages® is much more than print. It’s evolved into a multi-platform lead generation network. Yellow Pages® advertisers can now be searched for through Yellow Pages print, online, online, mobile, iPad and T-Hub. That’s over 14m visits by potential buyers a week(3), with about 70% of searches resulting in the buyer contacting a business.

Those same advertisers can also be searched for through our Whereis® and voice services, like 1234. That’s another 2.3m visits a week(4). And third party sites through which Yellow Pages® can be searched (like Google Maps and Bing Maps) receive many more potential visits every week.

It’s the diversity of this network that gives Yellow Pages® advertisers the edge over their competitors. Through just one company, our business customers can be searched for in print, online, voice and mobile: in directories, general and local search engines and mapping sites.

And there’s a lot more to come, so stay tuned.

Digital is leading the way forward. Our digital innovations are kicking goals.
It’s also been a great year for innovation, particularly in digital media. In fact, digital now accounts for 20% of our Australian revenue, which makes digital a major player for Sensis and the key growth engine moving forward.

The undoubted highlight has been the performance of our mobile services. Sensis’ total mobile usage grew by 80% to 3 million visits per month (15% of total digital usage)(5). Within that, we saw some fantastic growth from our new innovations. The White Pages® Mobile site grew from nothing to 410,000 monthly visits in less than a year, while our Yellow Pages® and White Pages® iPhone apps grew from nothing to almost 600,000 monthly visits in even less time. Even now, months after their launch, the Yellow Pages® and White Pages® iPhone apps are the fifth and seventh most popular free Lifestyle apps in Apple’s AppStore(6). Meanwhile, our more established mobile sites maintained strong growth, with Whereis® Mobile up 43% to 950,000 monthly visits and Yellow Pages® Mobile (not including iPhone app usage) up 56% to 560,000 monthly visits.

We’ve also been able to make very significant improvements to our online sites. We’ve made substantial upgrades to almost all our sites, designed to improve your ability to search our advertiser base and the quality of content you receive. We’ve also added social media sharing capabilities to White Pages® Online, Yellow Pages® Online and Citysearch®. We’ve also added new content to the Whereis® digital mapping database, including national upgrades to road geometry, point of interest features, 3D landmarks, junction views. This is all designed to make using satellite navigation a better experience for users of Whereis® powered systems.

And we’ve backed these many user experience improvements up with new digital advertising bundles, which make it easier for advertisers to profile themselves across our networks in the way they want to. These bundles, such as Purely Mobile Business and Digital Content Maximiser have performed exceptionally well, with uptake of both running well above target.

A big thank you
Finally, perhaps the most encouraging element of this year’s results has been the support of people – the customers and employees that are crucial to Sensis.

To begin with, thank you to all our customers – both users of our products and advertisers – for your unwavering support this year. It was pleasing to see that, despite the many challenges FY10 has delivered, our customers have remained very positive about the services we offer. In fact, today, many advertisers are asking us to do more for them, like providing new value-added marketing services to their businesses. To me, these requests are a real vote of confidence, and I can confirm we’re definitely going to respond to them. We have recognised a number of opportunities to improve the service we provide to our customers and we’ll be relentless in pursuing them. We’re listening, and keen to respond.

As I said before, stay tuned.

Of course, our FY10 performance would not have been possible without the people who are Sensis. It takes a difficult year like this to test any business and I want to really thank and congratulate our people for their commitment, not just to Sensis but to the needs of our customers, over FY10.

Until next time,

Bruce Akhurst

1: CEASA Main Media Report, December 2009
2: Sensis Business Index, May 2010 and earlier
3: All data represents average weekly visits, June quarter 2010. Print data from TMP, Universal Measurement Programme. Digital (online and mobile) data from Omniture SiteCatalyst.
4: Digital (online and mobile) data from Omniture SiteCatalyst. Voice data from Sensis internal call data.
5: Omniture SiteCatalyst, average monthly visits for June quarter 2010 vs June quarter 2009
6: Apple AppStore: Top free apps in the Lifestyle category. Average of daily results for the period 2 August 2010 to 6 August 2010

Learn how SEO, SEM and sustainability can benefit your business as Yellow Pages® experts take to the stage at this year’s NSW Small Business September.

Sensis is a key sponsor in this year’s event, which is an annual celebration of the importance of small business to the social and economic fabric of NSW.

In its fourth year of sponsorship, Yellow Pages® is running a month long series of education seminars targeting SMEs in growth in both greater Sydney and regional NSW.

Yellow Pages® experts will focus on to two key areas – digital marketing and greening up your business.

Experts from our business will talk about how SMEs can leverage mobile capabilities, undertake effective SEO and SEM marketing, provide key insights from a special report on e-commerce in metropolitan and regional NSW (from the Sensis E Business Report) plus sponsor a keynote speaking engagement by Jon Dee on environmental sustainability.

As in past years, Small Business September is an opportunity for people in small business to extend their networks, develop their skills and build links with the many support organisations that exist to promote business success.

I encourage small business owners of any background and industry to get along to these events (most of which are free) to help them build their knowledge and skills in managing a business across marketing, finance and operations.

Our consultants get quite involved in letting their customers know about these seminars and getting along to the seminars themselves to network with SMEs and further understand their advertising needs and business objectives.

Be inspired by over 300 events designed by industry experts to help your business flourish – I know I will.

To register for events – visit www.smallbusinessmonth.nsw.gov.au or call 1300 661 539.

Hi again. Well, Winter is here with some great rain for our gardens and dams. There’s a lot of exciting things happening at Sensis. And, to top it all off, St Kilda’s nudging the top of the AFL ladder. Could life get any better? In this update, I wanted to share with you some comments on our two speed economy, an exciting couple of months on the innovation front and a few beautiful sets of numbers.

Australia’s two-speed economy
We seem to have hit an uncertain cross-road in the Australian economy. There are signs of a solid return to growth and businesses in many sectors are performing well.

At the same time, however, confidence has dipped among Australia’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs). While SME confidence grew strongly from its historic lows during the GFC, the June Sensis® Business Index reported a significant quarterly drop in confidence. Confidence is still above the lows of last year, but it is concerning that it has fallen so far: especially when you consider that the chief concern among SMEs is ‘lack of work/sales’.

As we all know, the Federal Election is not likely to be far away. Given the importance of Australia’s SME sector and the millions of people it employs, I sincerely hope that the policies of all political parties will reflect a real focus on support for the SME sector.

A busy time for Yellow Pages®…
On a more positive note, we’re currently finalising the distribution of our Yellow Pages® print Regional and Living Local directories to households and businesses around Australia. As I mentioned in the last report, I’m proud to say that we have taken responsibility for the carbon footprint of all Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories from 1 February 2010. We will offset the carbon emissions through Government accredited providers and projects in Australia.

At the same time, the 2010 Yellow Pages® metropolitan campaign is now well and truly underway. This is one of Australia’s largest customer engagement operations with more than 1,000 consultants developing solutions that help hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses connect with the well over six million potential customers who use our print directories every month¹. That’ real muscle for Australia’s SMEs.

Of course, Yellow Pages®’ value extends far beyond the print directory these days, with millions more searches of Yellow Pages® advertising being conducted in online, mobile and voice every month.

… and a busy time in the labs as well
And we’re committed to building on that value. The evidence of this lies in the ‘run’ of digital innovations we’ve delivered recently. All these new releases further improve the quality and ease of use of our services for buyers and sellers. With so much to report, it’s hard to know where to start, so let’s just jump in.

Early June saw the launch of Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® sites specifically designed for the Apple iPad. It was great to be able to launch these tailored sites (complete with gestural interactions like panning and zooming with a swipe or pinch of your fingers) in time for the iPad launch.

We’ve also released upgrades to our Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® Mobile sites. All three incorporated auto suggest features to make searching easier for users as well as gestural mapping for high end Android and iPhone supported phones. On top of this, we added a more seamless click to call feature for the White Pages® and Yellow Pages® sites. In the case of White Pages® Mobile, this dropped the call wait time from around seven seconds to practically zero. And we also incorporated a range of new features for Yellow Pages® advertisers, including text descriptors, business logo and image gallery capabilities.

More recently, we launched a new social networking feature to White Pages® Online. ‘Save and Share’ lets you save interesting White Pages® listings or share them on Twitter or Facebook. Save and Share is already proving popular, with thousands of shares and a large number of resultant click backs from social networks to White Pages® Online. That, of course, means more potential leads for White Pages® advertisers.

Another exciting online announcement was the launch of an upgraded Bing search engine, which can now include Yellow Pages® listings (in the form of a ‘5-pack’) as part of its search results. This means Yellow Pages® advertisers can now be searched for on both Bing and Bing Maps.

We’ve loaded Citysearch® restaurant listings into Whereis.com. This has the joint benefit of improving the richness of the Whereis® experience, while helping to drive more potential customers to Citysearch® advertisers.

And we’ve launched online behavioural targeting for MediaSmart advertisers®. This gives advertisers the ability to deliver more relevant advertising to people using the MediaSmart® online network, which includes Sensis and Telstra sites and an extensive roster of third party sites.

Finally, we’re seeing great advertiser uptake of our bundled advertising products. Over the last year or so, we’ve released a strong range of new multi-product, multi-channel advertiser bundles such as the Yellow Pages® print and digital bundles and the priority advertiser bundle that spans 1234, Citysearch® and Whereis®. These bundles combine different advertising products into a single package, making it easier for advertisers to broaden their reach and create advertising solutions that meet their specific needs.

A beautiful set of numbers
Recently, there have been some great votes of confidence for what we’re doing at Sensis.

I mentioned in a previous update that Sensis looked like receiving great results on the 2010 Corporate Responsibility Index. The CRI, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is run by the St James Ethics Centre and is used by many major Australian businesses to benchmark their sustainability performance. Well, the results are now in. Our first year entrant score of 79.44% (bronze) last year has grown substantially to 92.51% (gold) this year. This result includes platinum scores (a new rating for benchmark performance) in three of the total six areas: sustainability strategy; integration; and assurance and disclosure. This achievement is a real source of pride and is the result of a strong commitment to sustainability from everyone in the business.

Meanwhile, we continue to see fantastic growth in mobile usage. In June, Whereis® Mobile officially became our first mobile site to hit a million visits in a month². Our other mobile sites – like Yellow Pages® and White Pages® – are also doing well. In fact, the whole portfolio is now being visited more than 3 million times a month², which represents high double digit growth over last June and potentially a huge amount of new ROI for our advertisers.

And on a totally different topic, we’ve been working with Mission Australia on the ‘1234 Project’. For every person who clicks ‘like’ on the 1234 Project Facebook home page, Mission Australia will give a pair of socks to a person in need. Our initial target was 12,340 socks and, in less than a month, we’ve already reached it!

The Human Yellow Pages®
Finally, if you think this update is a long read, spare a thought for Tansel Ali. To prepare for the upcoming World Memory Championships, Tansel, who is our own Australian Memory Champion, has turned himself into something of a human Yellow Pages®. Tansel is attempting to memorise every display advertisement (business card size or larger) in the Sydney Yellow Pages® so that he can recite any business name or number. For the record, that’s 2,306 pages, more than 16,000 numbers and a hell of a lot of reading!

That’s an incredible feat Tansel. All the best for the Championships in China later this year.

Best wishes,

Bruce Akhurst

1: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, April 2009 to March 2010. Base: Australians 14+
2: Omniture SiteCatalyst. June 2010

Yellow Pages® data shows the recent cold snap that has hit southern Australia has people rushing to install, purchase and repair heating systems in record numbers.

The number of people searching Yellow Pages® for plumbers and gasfitters, heating appliances and systems, heating repairs and service and firewood hit an all-time high last month.

Seasonally, heating related searches on yellowpages.com.au are at their peak in June. But this year, the sudden drop in temperatures has seen the numbers of searches in some categories more than triple last year’s the monthly average.

In June, searches on yellowpages.com.au in New South Wales for heating appliances and systems were up 200 per cent, searches for heating appliances and systems-repairs and service were up 216 per cent and searches for firewood were up 225 per cent, when compared to the monthly average for 2009.

Similarly, in Victoria, all time highs were experienced with a 95 per cent increase in searches for heating appliances and systems, a 234 per cent increase in searches for heating appliances and systems-repairs and service and a 262 increase in searches for firewood.

South Australian residents haven’t been spared from the cold. yellowpages.com.au recorded a 260 per cent increase in searches for heating appliances and systems, a 257 per cent increase in heating appliances and systems-repairs and service and a 247 increase in searches for firewood, when compared to the monthly average for 2009.

Even Western Australians have felt the chill with searches for heating appliances and systems up 203 per cent, heating appliances and systems-repairs and service searches were up 209 per cent and searches for firewood were up 232 per cent, when compared to the monthly average for 2009.

With the weather warming marginally over the weekend, Australians still have another 8.5 weeks of winter to go.

However, the search traffic to yellowpages.com.au indicates that should the mercury fail to rise over July and August, a good number of households in the south-east of the country will be ready!

Over 4.5 million people make over 13 million searches using the Yellow Pages® Book, yellowpages.com.au and Yellow Pages® Mobile each week.*

* Roy Morgan, Single Source Australia, 14 years and above, last 7 day average, July 2008 – June 2009

“If you’re going to communicate sustainability you can’t just talk about it, you have to do it. If you do, people will talk about you.”  That’s how Ben Peacock from Republic of Everyone summed up what people, business and government need to do in relation to sustainability at the recent National Green Brands Forum in Melbourne.

At Sensis we have been “doing” for some time and there’s a good summary of our sustainability commitments and achievements on our website if you’re keen to take a look.

Sensis’ Group Manager Brand and Marketing Communications Geraldine Davys presented a case study on our recent carbon neutrality announcement for our Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories.

The carbon neutrality announcement, which involves offsetting the carbon emissions of the directories through accredited providers and projects in Australia, was a big milestone for us. In fact, Sensis is the first major directory company in the world to have had its print and online directories certified carbon neutral.

Following this, Geraldine spoke about sustainability and why it is part of our brand architecture.

Using the examples of the Cupid and Hidden Pizza campaigns, Geraldine explained how they were produced with sustainability in mind.

For instance, with our Yellow Pages® Cupid television commercial, during the shoot we were very conscious of water wastage so we used recycled water for every take an included a ‘recycled water’ sign on the set being mindful of the water restrictions in Melbourne at the time.

With the Yellow Pages® Hidden Pizza restaurant campaign, almost everything inside the restaurant was made of recycled materials from the lights, to the pizza boxes to the rubbish bins.  All produce was sourced from local businesses and after the restaurant closed all leftover items were donated to local charities.  

At Sensis, we don’t just talk about sustainability, we do it.

They may sound like little things, but I get really excited by them. It shows that ‘sustainability’ is filtering its way through our business and is no longer something driven by the sustainability team and our green office champions alone. People in our business don’t make decisions based solely on quality and cost; we also look at the environmental and social impact as well.

The search is on for Australians who are working to create a better future as Sensis commences its annual Covers program to recognise the achievements of local heroes by featuring them on the cover of Yellow Pages® and White Pages® directories in 59 regions across Australia.

The “Australians Creating a Better Future” theme will run for the next six months as it searches for Australians to grace the covers of the 2011/12 Yellow Pages® and White Pages® books across regional and metro Australia.

The theme allows Sensis to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability and compliments the recent carbon neutral certification of our print and online Yellow Pages® and White Pages® directories under the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Friendly™ program. The carbon emissions created through these directories will be offset through the Greenhouse Friendly™ accredited providers and projects in Australia.

Anyone can nominate and this year, it couldn’t be easier. All you need to do is visit the new White Pages® Community site by clicking here.

Remember, we are searching for people who are thinking beyond themselves and making positive contributions to their local and wider communities from an economic, social and environmental standpoint.

So, if you feel you know someone who fits the bill, feel free to put them forward.

David Egan finds speaking first hand with Yellow Pages® advertisers is an important reminder of the real challenges that face Australian businesses every day.

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with 300 passionate business owners in Brisbane as part of two seminars sponsored by Yellow Pages®, the Queensland Government’s Small Business Solutions and TNS Research. The focus of those seminars was online advertising and search engine marketing. The theme of the morning was how to tap into the latest online trends to help promote your business.

I prepared a 30 minute walk through of what I thought were the hottest topics of the moment, social media, mobility, applications and content. While I am sure these topics were interesting and entertaining, I came away with a very clear message from those in attendance.

As much as these business owners are interested in what’s new, many are still coming to terms with what the internet means to their business. They spend hours working in their businesses, from self-storage to pest removal and they are the best at what they do. They all reflect on how advertising their business was once a fairly straight forward activity – and then along came the internet with new opportunities and, of course, challenges.

It’s clear when speaking to the attendees that they strongly believed that in investing in their own website gave them access to new business sales and leads. They also believe that if their websites are constructed correctly, they can get “free advertising” through a presence on search engines. Rightly or wrongly the feel that the more time they invest, the bigger the reward will be.

But many spoke of the challenges they faced in getting their websites right.

Everyone has an opinion on how to manipulate websites. And in essence the way you lay out your physical web pages and the words you use on those pages goes some way to helping you get found. And to complicate things further, there are the paid listings on search engines.

One thing that was clear when I spoke to some of the attendees was that they started online they did it in a small way and things seemed pretty cheap.

But then they got hooked.

One business owner mentioned to me that they now spend as much each month on their online keywords as they do for some of their traditional methods of advertising. Interestingly that doesn’t include all the time they spend managing it each week!

When it came to questions, the one I was asked the most was who to trust.

The question seems to evolve from increasing numbers of people knocking on their door making all kinds of promises. And the best answer came from one of my co-presenters, Peter Baldwin from the Queensland Government-sponsored Small Business Solutions Team.

According to Peter, listen, learn and leave your credit card at home. And I agree. Meeting with people is a good way to develop your understanding while not burning a hole in your pocket.

The other question I was repeatedly asked was is what to stop doing if adding the internet to the marketing mix. You need to do it all.

While it is clear that new forms of online usage mean that there are new ways in which  people will search for and discover your business, not everyone has dropped traditional media. 

Despite the hype around mobile, a recent report from research agency Nielsen suggested that while 43 per cent of all Australians own an internet enabled phone only one third of them regularly use it to access the web.

Reasons provided include bill shock that comes with a fear of how much it will cost and the fact the early generation phone are hard to use.

It’s these sorts of stats that remind you that we need to remind ourselves that not everyone is at the bleeding edge of technology.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to leave you with a comment made by one of the delegates in attendance.

“All these new technologies are complimentary. When email first arrived in my business, I didn’t throw away my fax machine. In fact I still use my fax machine every day. I know that there are alternate ways to communicate now with emails etc, but lots of my customers still fax through orders.”

I was delighted to recently receive our recent Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) scores.  For Heads of Sustainability across the country, the release of the CRI results is a tense time. Essentially for us, it is a little bit like waiting for your exam results.

Measuring, benchmarking and reporting our sustainability performance and practises is a critical part of being transparent and accountable.  One of the ways Sensis measures its progress in sustainable practises, is through the international Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) run by St. James Ethics Centre in Australia.

Importantly CRI is independently audited, which provides third party assessment of our performance.

This year, Sensis achieved a score of 92 per cent (a 13 per cent increase on last year) and reached an overall gold star rating. 

Significant achievements in our scores include three judging areas reaching the new “platinum” level, which was established for companies considered to be setting the benchmark (scoring 96 per cent and above). 

Sensis achieved the new platinum level in corporate strategy, integration and assurance and disclosure.  I’m particularly proud of the assurance and disclosure score given the significant increase from a participation ranking last year.  Transparency and assurance, I believe ,are also the foundations for sustainable practises and often more challenging to achieve. 

In addition to these platinum scores, Sensis also received a gold rating for management practise and social impact, alongside a silver rating for environmental impact. 

Last year Sensis participated for first time and were pleased to score 79 per cent, achieving a bronze star and the award for Best New Entry. Our initial submission also identified areas for improvement, which we have focused on.

Already this year we have made significant steps in improving our performance, particularly around environmental impact. Sensis announced its Commitment to Climate Change in February, which included reduction targets for operational greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon neutral certification of the Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories through the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Friendly program. The carbon emissions created through the production of these directory products will be offset through Greehouse Friendly™ accredited providers and projects in Australia.

For Sensis, other mechanisms we use to measure, benchmark and report our performance are through the London Benchmarking Group (community investment measurement and verification); and through our Sustainability report which meets AA1000 standards and reports against Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines.  Sensis’ Sustainability Report was independently assured last year for the first time and achieved an A+ GRI reporting standard.   It is available for viewing and download on our corporate site (about.sensis.com.au).

Sustainability remains on of Sensis’ five priority business areas and with the ongoing focus and drive for improvement, I hope to see us continuing along the journey and also achieving even higher scores in benchmarking indexes to reflect our progress.