Business Advertorial

Bags three awards for Corporate Social Responsibility:

HSBC amongst Top Ten Best Corporate Citizens for 2007

HSBC, Sri Lanka received three awards at the Best Corporate Citizens Award 2007 held recently. Winning in the Top Ten category for Best Corporate Citizen, HSBC was also placed winner in the CSR special projects category for Empowering Women for its flagship “Beeralu Lace Makers Programme” and was given a Merit Award for the Urban Micro Finance project for Women Entrepreneurs.

The awards ceremony was organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and brought together the industry’s best performers.

The Corporate Social Responsibility Awards presented on November29, recognised and rewarded, the Ten Best Corporate Citizens who have contributed to the society.

The judges applauded HSBC for developing a sustainable environment for the tsunami devastated local communities and empowering 400 low income families.

Chief Executive Officer, HSBC Sri Lanka David J H Griffiths, said “The Beeralu Lace and Urban Micro Finance projects are shinning examples of how organisations can work in partnership with various stakeholders to enhance corporate sustainability.

The outcome of these initiatives resulted in empowering more than 600 families to achieve sustainable livelihoods.

Hence it is not only the direct recipients who benefited but also various other groups. Winning the accolade is a confirmation that HSBC is amongst the top ten best CSR companies in Sri Lanka and it reinforces the commitment to the wider community”.

The winning entry for HSBC, in the category of “Empowering Women” was the “Beeralu Lace” project, which cultivated a growing industry for 200 tsunami affected Beeralu lace makers of Mirissa.

This unique community service was targeted towards the skilled category of women who had lost their lace making equipment during the Tsunami.

South Asia Partnership Sri Lanka (SAPSRI) in Collaboration encouraged this industry through the introduction of new designs and new types and colours of thread that had not been explored before.

The women also received training in creative designing to help them harness their creativity and create more unique and artistic designs.

In November 2006, HSBC in association with SAPSRI, introduced this fine art to a wider audience through an exhibition titled “Paramparaven” that showcased how the old craft of Beeralu met with the modern clothes, accessories and linen.

The objective of the exhibition was to help women find new markets and to sell the Beeralu lace - the beige and the new coloured lace.

The Urban Micro Finance project too, was recognized for its efforts and was given a Merit award in the same category.

The project empowered 400 low-income families to achieve sustainable livelihoods through a Micro Credit program. “Empowering Urban Women Entrepreneurs” was once again conducted in partnership with SAPSRI and was launched in June 2006.

By providing them with financial assistance in the form of loans the projects aimed at raising the income levels of women living in under-privileged urban areas in Colombo. 400 families from Mutuwal and Kirualpone, predominantly urban ghettos of the Colombo city were identified as a result of a survey conducted by SAPSRI.

The main beneficiaries were women engaged in small businesses such as sewing and selling clothes, garments, linen, fish, lunch packets and other food items.

Even though these communities were engaged in small business activities they lacked the financial know how and the collateral to access mainstream banking.

In September 2006 underr urban micro finance project HSBC began a series of workshops titled “Soduru Manpethata Vimasumak” to equip the participants with financial knowledge needed to run their businesses efficiently and effectively.

##############################

Triad talent shows it “can”

Triad Advertising held its second internal awards programme - the CAN Awards - on November 30 as a follow up to the event held in April this year.

The finalist judging panel, composed of industry specialists from the advertising and marketing fraternity was the highlight of the event, where over 120 short listed entries were evaluated from a total entry figure of 300.

“The most significant fact about the award show was the number of entries we received.

With almost 75% of the agency participating irrespective of their job function; be it client servicing, media, creative or final artwork; the event proved to be great motivation tool and reward mechanism. It also proved that everyone has a creative streak in them.

The fact that they were not from the creative department was not an obstacle to conceptualise some great out of the box ideas “, Jt. Managing DirectorVaruni Amunugama Fernando said.

With IPods, medals and other tokens as awards, ten winners claimed glory.

Commenting on the quality of the entries, one of the judges Rajiv Weerasinghe said “almost all the ideas were exceptional, those who won had crafted their ideas with precision, those who didn’t would have, if they gave more thought to crafting.

But overall the fact is that all of the short listed work had a striking and appealing idea behind them”.

Triad Advertising - twice adjudged Sri Lanka’s number one agency at the Chillies Advertising Awards 2006 and Chillies Advertising Awards 2007- committed the year 2007 as the “year of learning”.

The CAN Awards falls within the long list of learning experiences carried out during the year.

##############################

New entertaining features introduced:

Lanka Bell makes calling fun with ‘Bell Tunez’

Sri Lankans can now project their personalities and entertain their callers at the same time through the latest innovation from Lanka Bell.

Some 700,000 plus subscribers can store a favourite song in one of four languages on their Lanka Bell phones for the listening pleasure of their callers with the launch of ‘Bell Tunez,’ a hip new feature that is expected to set a new trend.

Songs and instrumentals representing many genres in English, Sinhala, Tamil and Hindi are available for downloading enabling Lanka Bell subscribers to use their CDMA phones as an extension of their personalities and to make calling them fun for family and friends.

“This is yet another value addition for our subscribers,” Managing Director Lanka Bell, Suren Goonewardene said. “It also demonstrates that innovation can convert a utilitarian appliance like a phone into a source of entertainment and bring a spark to our daily routines” he said.

He said Bell Tunez would cater to all tastes and age groups in recognition of the size of the company’s subscriber base. “Customers can choose from Cliff Richard to Enrique or Amaradeva to Iraj. It’s really good fun,” Goonewardene said.

And for those to whom music is not the ideal reflection of their personalities, special sound effects or humour in the form of comedy clips are also available, to ensure that their callers can be surprised or titillated.

Three modes of access have been provided for subscription to Bell Tunez.

The first is Lanka Bell’s tri-lingual Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) facility which can be accessed by dialling 1551 from any Lanka Bell CDMA phone. Thereafter, voice prompts will guide the caller through the simple steps for selecting his or her song or sound.

The second method is a request by SMS from the phone to an allocated Lanka Bell number 1551 where the subscribers input the designated numbers for the songs of their choice.

Those who have an internet connection on their CDMA phone can also view the song list on the Lanka Bell website www.lankabellnet.com/belltunez and make their choices.

A selected song or sound will be heard by callers for between 30, 45 or 90 days, unless the subscriber changes it more frequently.

###############################

Dell launches R900 server

Maalik AZIZ

The Dell company launched its latest products to the market, the R900 server and the ‘OpenManage’ systems management package recently.

Director, Country Manager of Dell, Catherin Lian said that the new vision of Dell is to simplify information technology.

“Along with more efficient processes, reduced maintenance costs and deployment time, and significantly less complexity, we enable customers to spend more time on the innovation front, thereby increasing investments,” she said.

According to Lian, the new R900 server will help organisations to increase productivity and to reduce costs. She also stated that the R900 server is currently the fastest server in the market, it consumes the lowest amount of power compared with other servers in the market currently and that it delivers unmatched database performance.

Lian also stated that Dell is currently the 34th placed company in the fortune 500 companies. Softlogic Trading has been the sole authorised distributor of Dell for the last 14 years.

The Enterprise Business Manager of Dell Anthony Loh said, that Dell provides its customers management functionality with less complexity.

The CEO of Softlogic Trading the sole distributor of Dell, Roshan Rosool said that the new dell server helps organisations to reduce running cost, better time management which will lead to higher investments.

Rasool said that dell is the largest selling computer server among the corporate sector in Sri Lanka.

##############################

HNB celebrates silver jubilee at Vavuniya

Hatton National Bank (HNB) celebrated its 25th anniversary on December 4 with a religious ceremony at Vavuniya branch in the presence of Senior Manager, Northern Region A.V. Beeadle.

The bank has become a household name among the people of Vavuniya by developing many businessman, farmers and increasing savings culture among school children in the area.

During this period the branch developed to be a fully-fledged “A” grade branch by providing most of the modern banking solution for the people in the area with latest Internet and SMS banking facilities.

The branch also developed a remote village called Kidaichchoori by providing Gami pubudu loan facilities under micro finance scheme. The bank was able to uplift many farmers in this village to a sustainable level.

Recently one of the leading farmers was selected from this village to visit India for an educational tour along with the 15 farmers selected from the other part of the country during this year.

During the first “Pathum Vimana” draw of the bank Vavuniya customer was the winner of the house in Colombo and thereafter many customers won cars and other prizes in this draw.