Jul 26, 2017 - CONFIDENTIAL. Technology to help trim waiting times at barbers. Booking online for a men's barber visit i
BUSINESS 17
WEDNESDAY JULY 26 2017
BUSINESS NEWS
BUSINESS
CONFIDENTIAL Technology to help trim waiting times at barbers Booking online for a men’s barber visit in Darwin — really. Yes folks it is true. Star Barbers in Star Arcade, in the Smith St Mall, has started using an app called Booksy. Owner Joy Arnott tells Business Confidential the app will save time for her customers. Normally a barber shop is a walk-in affair and then you wait your turn. But for some, time is money, so anything which reduces waiting times is a bonus. Darwin is changing.
Cattle queen in demand
Global ICT company InterSystems will be opening an office in Darwin. INSET: InterSystems project director Gary White
Territory staff to carry on IT work ASHLEY MANICAROS THE technology company awarded a $259 million contract to replace the NT’s four obsolete clinical IT health systems with a single solution is hunting for Territorybased staff. InterSystems Australia has been engaged to deliver the Core Clinical Systems Renewal Program for the Northern Territory Government. InterSystems is a USbased major global supplier of clinical ICT systems which has operated in Australia for 25 years. It has more than 150 staff. One of the core requirements of the tender was it must base its key project staff
$259m health system project to boost skills in the NT and develop a local support environment. InterSystems project director Gary White said the company was already interviewing internal candidates to join him in the Territory. “It is a huge piece of work from a healthcare perspective,” he said. “It is the largest work we’ve done in Australia. It will transform health care in the NT. “Once the project is completed, it is not a case of it goes away. “We expect that after five
years, we’d build a level of skill to continue on. “In a production stable environment there will be a requirement for upgrades and add-ons to continue the evolution of the system in the Territory.” InterSystems has chosen Dialog Information Technology as its local integration partner. Mr White said an office lease would be signed in midAugust. He expects a staff of about 40 will be working on the project. “We are advertising for
the roles in the Territory. Ideally people from here will apply for them,” he said. “The roles are also being advertised on Seek but we will only hire people who will relocate to the Northern Territory.” Some of those roles include project managers, critical safety officers, critical change managers and application specialists. Mr White said they wanted to hear from people from a variety of backgrounds, including medical. “We’d like to have those with an IT bent who are ward nurses, theatre nurses or even doctors apply,” he said. “Over the life of the project, there will always be roles available as we backfill.”
Cash transactions cut by almost half in decade AUSTRALIANS appear increasingly willing to adopt a cashless society, research reveals, with credit and debit cards overtaking cash as the most common method of payment. And Aussies are using cards more often for smaller purchases, in line with the explosion in tap-and-go payments at outlets such as supermarkets, cafes and for transport. The findings from the Reserve Bank’s latest Consumer Payments Survey, held every three years, reveal an accelerV1 - NTNE01Z01MA
ating shift away from cash across all age brackets. Cards now account for 52 per cent of payments, up from 43 per cent in 2013, and more than double such the poll began in 2007. Cash has fallen from 69 per cent of all payments in 2007 to 37 per cent in the latest findings. Report author Mary-Alice Doyle said: “Consumers of all ages and incomes are, on average, making a smaller share of their payments in cash than they were a decade ago.”
Although contactless card payments have been widely adopted, mobile phone payments are yet to enjoy a similar rise, owing to them being relatively new on the payments stage. And there was a sobering note for credit card giants looking to woo consumers, with the promise of rewards schemes. Cardholders aged under 30 prefer to use debit over credit cards, at a ratio of four debit card transactions to every single credit card payment.
There was an even split between debit and credit card use for respondents aged 30 or over. The RBA said reforms to interchange fees had reduced the incentives for higher-cost credit cards, while consumers were also likely to be more concerned about racking up huge levels of debt in the present economic climate. Across a week, the RBA tracked the transactions of more than 1500 respondents, who recorded almost $2 million in combined transactions.
NT Cattlemen’s Association’s Tracey Hayes is gaining plenty of attention at the moment with the high-profile class action relating to the 2011 live export ban. Media from all over the country have been chasing her for comment. But they aren’t on their own. It seems Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove is also seeking her skills. Hayes has been appointed for a two-year stint on the Council for the Order of Australia which decides who gets what gongs for service
Out of the ‘Game of Thrones’ closet We see him on the nightly ABC News with all his graphs and we read his columns in our own NT Business Review and the The Australian, but it turns out Alan Kohler may have outed himself as a Game of Thrones junkie. It is always a dead giveaway someone loves a TV show when they can quote it without trying. And so it was in a recent Kohler comment piece: “As Benjen Stark told Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, ‘nothing said before the word ‘but’ really counts’.”
