You may recall my earlier article in March of this year when I mentioned that we may be in for a soft landing when it comes to the taxation impact on interest earned on unit trust funds and in particular the so-called money market unit trust funds. It appears that various institutions have found approval from the relevant authorities and their investors to have their fund structures and fund rules amended to amongst others address the issue of interest generated by such funds and consequently address the impact of taxation thereon.

Winter is here. This means flu, running noses and those never ending coughs. As I am writing this piece, I am coughing and sneezing. Sometimes I see my cough on my screen and keyboard. I have always thought that this is a major healthy hazard and I have tried on many occasions to tell management that when someone has a cough or flu, the person is better off at home to avoid infecting the rest of the office but to no avail. Last winter, I had a never-ending cough and flu. I suspected there was a bug in the office but no one believed me. My keyboard is dusty and yesterday when I was cleaning it a lot of food particles fell off.

Background
Last week we started to look at the sales business function, with the focus on Sales Force Automation (SFA). As discussed last week, sales force automation basically includes all of the technologies, techniques, and strategies on which successful sales are built. We will continue with this topic this week by looking at the concepts of contact management and pipeline management in the sales function and the involvement of ERP / Business Management Systems.

The whole point of branding is to get consumers to interact with products or services. The point of having electronic presence must consequently be to get consumers to interact with the brand online/ The natural point of departure is to begin thinking about online purchases. This is flawed reasoning. The only instance where online purchasing makes sense is in certain fields of retail, and even this can be difficult.

Digu //Naobeb, the CEO of the Namibia Tourism Board (NTB), recently predicted that tourism arrival numbers in Namibia during 2008 might, for the first time, reach the 1 million mark. Not surprising, perhaps, since in the ten years from 1996 to 2006, tourists numbers virtually doubled to a total of over 833,000 two years ago.

Shell Country Chairman Willie Mokgatlhe is urging businesses to become more proactive in environmental issues and to ensure that they assist in the advent of disasters. He was speaking this week when his organisation donated N$100 000 to the Ministry of Mines and Energy in Windhoek this week in support of the northern flood victims.