Latest news with #operations
BBC News
33 minutes ago
- Business
- BBC News
New director at Guernsey Airport appointed
A new director has been appointed at Guernsey Ports said the new role would partly replace the chief operating officer position and will be filled by Richard Thomasson said he wanted to focus on putting the "customer experience at the heart-beat of our strategy". Ross Coppolo, managing director of the airport, said Mr Thomasson's "experience, knowledge and enthusiasm will be an asset". 'Crucial role' Mr Thomasson has held senior airport roles for the last 18 years including at Cornwall Airport Newquay and Bristol Airport. Mr Coppolo said: "This is a crucial role in which Richard will oversee day-to-day airport operations, uphold regulatory compliance and help to guide our long-term strategy, supporting our aims to grow connectivity and diversify the business."Mr Thomasson said: "It was clear through the interview process that my vast previous aviation experience would be a great fit for this role. "I cannot wait to get started working in partnership with the ports team and wider business partners."
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Platform Engineering At A Crossroads: Golden Paths Or Dark Alleyways
Following the golden path to platform engineering success is not without its pitfalls and pernicios ... More passageways. getty Automation equals efficiency. It's a central promise that's now permeating every segment of the software application development lifecycle. From robotic process automation accelerators that work at the user level, through encapsulated best practices applied throughout the networking connection tier used to bring applications to production… and onward (especially now) to the agentic software functions that can take natural language prompts (written by developers) and convert them to software test cases and, subsequently, also write the code for those tests. Automation represents a key efficiency play that all teams are now being compelled to adopt. As an overarching practice now carrying automated software development tooling forward, platform engineering is widely regarded as (if not quite a panacea) an intelligent approach to encoding infrastructure services and development tools in a way that means developers can perform more self-service functions without having to ask the operations team for backup. Platform engineering encapsulates the deliberate design and delivery of internal software application development tools, services and processes that define how software engineers build software. It's a holistic approach that covers the underlying processes, people and (perhaps more crucially of all), the cultural workflow mindset of an organization. At the keyboard, platform engineering is not necessarily all about implementing new technologies (although the omniscient specter of agentic AI will never be far away); it's about fostering consistency and a shared understanding across diverse teams. Devotees who preach the gospel according to platform engineering talk of its ability to lead towards so-called "golden paths" today. These can be described as standardarized workflow routes where infrastructure and configuration parameters for software development are encoded, ratified and documented. Often referred to as an 'opinionated' software practice (i.e. one that takes a defined path and does things one way, not the other way) that help individual software engineers stay close to tooling and processes that will be used by all other developers in a team or department. 'One way to think of a golden path is to imagine baking a cake. The steps required to bake a cake include pre-heating the oven to a specific temperature, gathering the right baking tools… and having the necessary ingredients. It's more than following a recipe, it's also making sure you use the right tools and techniques. If you want more people to bake the same cake, you find ways to become more consistent and efficient, explains Red Hat , on its DevOps pages. According to Derek Webber, VP of engineering at AI-enabled software quality engineering company Tricentis , platform engineering does have the potential to be golden, but it can also lead teams down a dark and dusty track into the Wild West. Why The Wild West? 'Yes, the promise of platform engineering lies in creating golden paths for software delivery. However, the absence of a traditional structured approach to software development often leads to what can only be described as the 'Wild West' of software development, particularly within large, scaling enterprises,' stated Webber. 'In such environments, each product team might independently craft their own unique pipelines, tools and processes. While this might afford initial autonomy, it inevitably leads to fragmentation. As organizations grow from a few dozen to hundreds or thousands of engineers, the tight-knit integration and level of shared understanding that characterizes a startup are lost. Developers become isolated, building 'unique snowflakes' of software pipelines that are difficult to maintain, understand and transfer knowledge across.' This fragmentation might be argued to severely hamper an organization's ability to be flexible and nimble, with an ability to move fast (remember the pandemic, yeah, that kind of change). Why would this be so? Because every new feature, every bug fix and even basic team reorganization becomes a slower and more laborious task. This can happen because of cross-team dependencies when everything is so formally encoded, it can happen because developers see their work as a project, rather than it being a product… and it can happen simply as a result of poorly documented tools in the platform engineering firmament. A fragmented coding landscape also obviously presents challenges to an organization's security posture, making it more difficult to ensure consistent compliance and vulnerability management across all services. DevEx, The Software World On Time 'The true power of platform engineering, especially when championed by a dedicated developer experience (DevEx) team, comes when it is able to balance two critical, often conflicting, objectives: speed and quality. This can be achieved by providing the necessary checks and balances that promote operational consistency and efficiency at scale,' said Webber. 'A core tenet of effective platform engineering is, therefore, the integration of testing from the outset to ensure quality is inherent, not an afterthought. While the industry has long advocated a 'shift left' approach, empowering developers to take on more testing responsibilities earlier in the development lifecycle, it's vital not to overcorrect.' Shifting everything left without considering the end-to-end product can lead to a different kind of fragmentation further down the line. The suggestion here is that platform engineering, via, through and under the auspices of a DevEx team, enables a more holistic approach. Webber says he's convinced that the DevEx team plays a pivotal role in creating a consistent testing framework when applied in the realm of platform engineering. It works by providing developers with readily available, uniform tools and processes. It bridges the gap in domain knowledge that often plagues large organizations, ensuring software engineers have the context needed to build robust solutions that actually work and actually scale. By providing pipeline automation, self-serve tools, environment management and established practices for observability and compliance, the DevEx team frees developers from the burden of figuring out how to build the pipeline and hook in tools. They can instead focus on what they build: the core product functionality. 'This shift in responsibility is transformative,' enthused Tricentis' Webber. 'When developers aren't forced to create their own 'special flavour' of every operational component, they gain immense speed and agility. They can move faster, knowing that the underlying platform provides reliable, secure and quality-assured foundations.' It appears that the consistency instilled by platform engineering, not just in tools, but in processes and mindset, becomes the bedrock of what this approach means. Webber and others agree that this could be particularly critical in an era where advancements like AI (and the future allure of can rapidly generate code, necessitating robust and consistent guardrails to maintain quality and security. CNCF Overview View 'We're seeing real traction in the CNCF ecosystem where platform engineering, when paired with strong developer experience practices, helps teams improve efficiency and avoid fragmented tooling. The goal isn't rigid standardization; it's creating shared, supported paths that scale with the organization. Especially as AI speeds up engineering development, having consistent, observable and secure platforms in a cloud-native fashion is what keeps innovation sustainable,' said Chris Aniszczyk , CTO, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a global non-profit dedicated to promoting open computing standards and platforms. Will Fleury, VP of engineering at enterprise AI coding agent company Zencoder sees platform engineering as an opportunity and a challenge. "One squad [developer team], one technology stack each? That's a tax on every software development sprint," he observes. 'The real price of skipping platform engineering isn't the complexity it might add, it's the chaos that fills the gap if we do it wrong. Building and running an internal developer platform takes effort, but letting every squad roll its own infrastructure, compliance hooks and operational plumbing burns far more time, money and ultimately complexity.' Golden Path, Tunnel Vision? It's important to remember that the focus on internal workflows can miss a critical dimension. Platform discussions obsess over shift left (test early) but equally important is what Soham Ganatra , co-founder at Composio calls 'shift out' i.e. when a new service has to handshake with a payments rail or partner API. "If your platform can't make that external connection trivial, developers will tunnel under a paved road and the whole notion of a golden path collapses,' said Ganatra. He saus he has seen teams spend months perfecting internal developer workflows only to watch everything fall apart at the network boundary. 'A beautiful continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline means nothing if deploying to production requires three Slack messages, two Jira tickets and a phone call to someone in a different timezone just to get firewall rules updated. The platform needs to extend beyond an organization's own chart; it has to anticipate and smooth over the messy realities of partner integrations, compliance audits and the fact that your biggest customer is still running Internet Explorer 11 in production," he said. Shared, standardized, supported software What this whole discussion aims to champion is not DevEx instead of platform engineering, but platform engineering with a crucial developer experience element in it to help avoid the use of isolated or custom-built tools in a shared, standardized and centrally supported ecosystem. For developers following the yellow brick road towards what they hope is elevation to a platform engineering golden path, we need to engineer people, processes and product just as much as we do platform. As the use of AI coding tools deepens across the software industry, it's actually the cultural human workplace factors that will now have an amplified effect on whether software projects succeed or fail.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
When to Hire and When to Wait in Your Trucking Business
Let's get this straight—adding a driver isn't just about filling a seat. It's about knowing exactly when your business can sustain it, when it needs it, and when waiting is the smarter move. Too many small carriers hire too early, chasing growth without the freight to back it up or the systems to support it. And what happens? Payroll gets tight. Equipment sits. Operations spiral. You're not growing—you're bleeding. Hiring has to be a strategic decision, not a hopeful one. If you're running a small operation and thinking about bringing someone on—whether it's your first driver or your fifth—this article is your gut check. Because timing matters just as much as execution. We're going to walk through the signs that it's time to expand, the indicators that you're not ready yet, and the foundational work you need in place before that hire ever sees the inside of your truck. This is where most small carriers fall short. They land one good contract or start seeing some consistent freight on the board, and they think, 'It's time to scale.' But steady isn't the same as sustainable. One broker with consistent loads is not a business model—it's a dependency. And if that freight disappears, now you've got payroll due on a driver you can't keep rolling. Before you hire, ask yourself: Can I consistently cover an additional truck with profitable freight, not just movement? Do I have a backup plan if my primary source of loads dries up? Have I run the numbers beyond just the gross—factoring in fuel, payroll, insurance, and downtime? If you can't say yes to all three, you're not ready. Waiting is smarter than hiring someone you can't afford to pay three months from now. Hiring a driver without knowing your cost per mile is like trying to win a race without knowing where the finish line is. You've got to know your breakeven down to the cent—per mile, per week, per truck. If you don't know: How many loaded miles you need to run weekly to stay profitable How much cash flow your business requires to cover payroll every two weeks How long you can float expenses if a shipper pays late or a load cancels …then hiring isn't a business decision—it's a guess. And in this market, guesses get expensive real fast. Here's a better question than 'Should I hire?' Ask: 'Am I already maximizing the truck I have?' Too many owners jump to hiring because they're tired. They want help. But the truth is, a second driver won't solve a business that isn't optimized. If your current truck isn't running 5+ days a week, or if you're turning down freight you could cover yourself, you're not ready to hire—you're ready to tighten up. That said, if you're booked out days in advance, running profitable lanes, and consistently turning down loads because you can't cover them—that's your signal. Demand is pulling ahead of supply. That's when a second truck makes sense. Let's talk about money. Hiring a driver means you're committing to paying someone every week—even if your customers don't pay for 30 days. You need at least 45–60 days of payroll set aside before that hire ever steps into your operation. If that sounds like a stretch, you're not alone. But it's also your red flag. Do the math: What's your average driver payroll cost per week, including taxes and worker's comp? Multiply that by 6–8 weeks. That number is your safety net. If you don't have it, wait. Because once the driver's in, there's no pause button. Running tight and hoping your next invoice pays in time is not a business strategy. Adding a driver doesn't just mean adding miles—it means adding complexity. Dispatch, safety, maintenance tracking, driver communication, onboarding, load paperwork—it all scales with every truck. If you're running everything manually or off your phone, you're going to burn out or drop the ball. Or both. Before hiring, ask: Do I have a standard process for dispatching loads, collecting BOLs, and tracking hours? Is my ELD ready to manage a second driver? Do I have a way to monitor safety and compliance in real time? Do I have someone (or a system) that can help manage the back-office work that comes with another truck? If your answer is 'I'll figure it out when they start,' you're already behind. Build the system first. Then staff it. Let's talk about what right looks like. Here's when hiring is the right call: You've got a contract or direct shipper volume that your current truck can't fully handle You're operating profitably, consistently, with cash flow that supports 60 days of payroll You have systems in place to dispatch, track, and support another truck You're turning down freight that aligns with your lanes, not just taking anything that moves You've tested your numbers and hiring doesn't just add revenue—it adds margin In that situation, adding a driver is a force multiplier. You're not just growing—you're growing right. If you're still heavily dependent on load boards, still running inconsistent freight, or still managing everything out of a single spreadsheet, hiring isn't going to fix it. It's going to break it faster. Wait if: You're still guessing at your weekly numbers You've got unpaid invoices that are 30+ days old You're running negative weeks more often than not You're hoping another truck will create cash flow instead of sustain it There's no shame in waiting. There's only risk in rushing. Adding a driver isn't a milestone—it's a responsibility. And in this industry, hiring too early will cost you more than waiting too long ever will. The numbers don't lie. If you're not running lean, consistent, and cash-positive, more trucks won't fix the problem—they'll multiply it. But when you've got the freight, the systems, and the financial foundation in place, that hire can be a game-changer. Just make sure it's a business move, not a bailout. The post When to Hire and When to Wait in Your Trucking Business appeared first on FreightWaves. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Globe and Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Menu Tiger Powers Smarter Operations Amid Restaurant Cost Surge
Menu Tiger Powers Smarter Operations Amid Restaurant Cost Surge The restaurant is undergoing a radical transformation as rising restaurant costs reshape operational strategies and business models. Food costs, labor expenses, rent, utilities, and compliance fees have all surged, opening operators with the opportunities to rethink every dollar spent and earned, and investing in modern tech like MENU TIGER's restaurant ordering system has become a critical tool for staying profitable in this new landscape. According to a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, food-away-from-home prices have increased by 4% since 2024. The index for full-service meals rose to 4.3%, and the index for limited-service meals increased to 3.4% over the same period. This is due to adjusting the Customer Price Index (CPI) per food item, such as beef, eggs, vegetables, fruits, and dairy. Meanwhile, Harvard Business Review stated that economic turmoil due to the pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of the supply chain, which has yet to stabilize in the aftermath of the pandemic. Labor, which already accounts for about 30% to 35% of the restaurant's operational costs, has become even more expensive. Plus, rent and occupancy expenses rose by 7.73% last year, a nearly two-percentage-point increase over 2023's average of 5.83%. Not to mention, the restaurant profit margin narrows as cost rises. Traditionally, restaurants operate with a razor-thin margin between 3% and 6%. Some operators are now seeing margins slip below 2% or even operating at a loss. Many restaurateurs are now turning to technology in response to these pressures. One of the most impactful tools has been an upgraded MENU TIGER restaurant ordering system that allows for more efficient ordering, fewer errors, and faster service times. MENU TIGER offers a comprehensive platform that allows customers to view menus, place orders, and pay via smartphones through dynamic menu QR codes. This eliminates the need for physical menus and reduces front-of-house labor demands. 'Many restaurants are looking for practical, low-overhead and restaurant expenses solutions,' said Benjamin Claeys, CEO of MENU TIGER. 'MENU TIGER allows operators to manage real-time pricing, streamline operations, and deliver a modern, contactless dining experience, all in one dashboard,' he added. So, there's no need for additional cost to streamline the customer experience or go through drastic changes in the workflow, because efficient service with minimal expenses is what this digital platform is for. This helps owners re-allocate the restaurant budget to other areas needing improvement, maximizing the costs prepared without additional spending. Restaurants using this digital menu ordering platform have reported significant operational improvements. Some venues have seen a 20% to 30% reduction in restaurant cost and labor expenses, while others report an increase in average ticket size thanks to upselling features and visual menus. Despite the challenges, industry leaders remain cautiously optimistic. Consumers are still dining out, though changes in their habits are evident. There's greater demand for value, convenience, and meaningful experiences. Restaurants that can deliver on these fronts while keeping a sharp eye on costs are positioned to weather the storm. Thus, investing in the right restaurant order system is better equipped to thrive in this competitive and complex environment. As inflation and market pressures persist, the restaurant industry's ability to adapt will determine its sustainability. Rising restaurant costs are no longer a temporary challenge but a new reality for owners. But from embracing technology and redesigning operations to adopting smarter restaurant ordering systems like MENU TIGER, restaurant owners are proving that resilience, creativity, and operational discipline can still and will drive success.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
10 Startup Jobs That Are Crucial But Rarely Hired Early Enough
Hiring is a game of leverage. Growth stage startups that think beyond the obvious roles can set ... More themselves up for faster execution and less firefighting. In this article we explore the undervalued roles in a startup team. After the very early stages, once an enterprise starts growing (organically or through funding), founders often focus on hiring exclusively developers and salespeople. While those roles are essential, many equally important functions are either delayed or handled ad hoc, leading to inefficiencies, burnout, or missed opportunities. This article explores roles that are often underestimated or under-prioritized in the early days but can dramatically improve startup execution, speed, and resilience. 1. Generalist Operations Lead Every startup needs someone who can connect the dots across tools, people, and workflows. Yet early operations hires are often postponed until 'things are chaotic,' which is precisely when it becomes hardest to onboard one. Early-stage ops leads don't just 'keep the lights on'; they handle finance, vendor setup, customer support, legal paperwork, internal tooling, and logistics. Hiring someone who thrives in ambiguity can free up the founders to focus on growth or product, which is extremely important if the founder or founders are technical specialists. 2. Technical Program Manager Even startups with a solid engineering team often delay hiring a TPM, thinking it's only needed at scale. But the earlier you have someone who can manage cross-functional planning, organize releases, and flag bottlenecks, the faster your product can evolve. This role becomes critical when product, engineering, and design start pulling in different directions. At companies like Stripe and Airbnb, early TPMs were instrumental in translating vision into execution. 3. Customer Success Support is reactive. Success is proactive. Early-stage startups often overlook customer success until churn becomes a problem, but by then, valuable insight has already been lost. Hiring someone who can onboard customers, collect feedback, and monitor usage helps prevent silent churn and can increase retention early. Startups like Notion and Figma invested early in community-style customer engagement, which gave them feedback loops before they scaled. 4. Recruiter Оr Talent Lead Founders often do all hiring themselves early on, which makes sense, up to a point. But once you're hiring for more than one role at a time or scaling beyond referrals, a dedicated recruiter or talent lead can save enormous time. This role pays off quickly: crafting job descriptions, managing funnels, and keeping momentum in candidate conversations is a full-time job. Startups that delay this hire often miss great candidates due to slow or inconsistent processes. 5. Finance And Accounting Lead Most startups wait until their first funding round is closed or until taxes are due to think about finance. But early financial hygiene - managing burn, forecasting runway, and tracking invoices, often prevents costly mistakes down the line. An experienced part-time finance operator or early controller can help founders make better decisions without relying only on gut feeling. 6. Product Marketing Marketing isn't just for after product-market fit. A product marketer can help shape how the product is positioned from day one, run early customer interviews, and test narratives. In startups like Slack and Superhuman, early PMMs played a crucial role in crafting language that resonated. Without this role, products often struggle to articulate value, which slows down both user acquisition and fundraising. 7. Internal Tools Engineer / No-Code Ops As teams grow, inefficiencies compound. Startups that invest early in internal tooling via software engineers or no-code automation specialists scale faster and with fewer headaches. This hire helps automate onboarding, reporting, internal dashboards, and repetitive tasks. It's a multiplier role — especially in lean teams. 8. Design Systems Or UX Ops Founders often hire designers to work on user interfaces, but few think about UX infrastructure. A systems thinker in design can help enforce consistency, build component libraries, and reduce the design-to-dev gap. For startups shipping fast and often, this role helps avoid messy product interfaces that become expensive to clean up later. It also keeps cross-functional teams aligned. 9. Compliance/Legal Advisor This is especially critical in regulated sectors like fintech, healthtech, or anything involving user data. Waiting too long to get legal and compliance advice can result in technical rework, regulatory delays, or worse — penalties. This doesn't need to be a full-time hire early on. But having someone on retainer who understands your space can de-risk future launches and investor due diligence. 10. Content/Documentation Specialist Content is often seen as a growth function, but early documentation - onboarding guides, internal SOPs, product notes, and public help docs - sets the tone for scalability. Startups with strong documentation reduce onboarding time (for employees and users), get fewer support tickets, and enable async collaboration. This role can start part-time or as a hybrid content/marketing hire.
