ITGP’s books can now be bought at branches of Waterstone’s and Blackwell across the UK, as well as in the flagship Foyles shop in London and the Jarrold department store in Norwich.

Alan Calder, Chief Executive of IT Governance, says: “The fact that high street retailers are stocking our titles proves how successfully we are communicating complex issues in an accessible way. We’re delighted to be associated with names as prestigious as Foyles, Waterstone’s, Blackwell and Jarrold. They represent the very best in UK retailing, just as we represent the very best publishing in our field.”

From a single shop in 1982, to more than 300 stores today, Waterstone’s is a giant of UK book retailing. Even an average-sized Waterstone’s outlet stocks around 30,000 titles, with the flagship London Piccadilly shop holding some 200,000 titles.

Leading academic bookseller, Blackwell UK, operates over 60 outlets across England, Scotland and Wales. Founded in 1879, the company remains globally respected for its knowledge and love of books and bookselling.

One of the most famous bookshops in the world, Foyles on Charing Cross Road in London stocks over 200,000 titles. That huge offering now includes a range of ITGP books, including Calder’s best-selling Nine Steps to Success: An ISO 27001 Implementation Overview.

The flagship Jarrold department store in Norwich city centre has more than 40,000 books in stock. The many ITGP publications now on sale in the store include the industry-leading ‘soft skills’ books written by Sarah Cook and Naomi Karten, such as Coaching for High Performance and Changing How You Manage and Communicate Change.

Lawrence Britt, Programme Manager, Business and Computing at City College Norwich, says: “ITGP’s books looking at soft skills are concise, informative and value for money. They offer clear guidance to anybody interested in achieving management and efficiency gains.”

A growing number of businesses are turning to ITG’s IT Governance Framework Toolkit for the resources needed to structure an approach to King III compliance.

As the name suggests, King III is the third and latest version of the King Code and Report on Governance for South Africa. The report aims to keep the nation at the forefront of international corporate governance and includes a number of board-level IT governance principles.

Alan Calder, Chief Executive of ITG, says: “King III is eager to raise the awareness of directors to the importance of IT governance. The report clearly states that a company board should be responsible for IT governance, that IT should form an integral part of a company’s risk management, and that a board should ensure information assets are managed effectively.”

Companies can best achieve King III compliance by drawing on the best practice guidelines contained in ISO/IEC 38500, the international IT governance standard, and the COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology) framework for IT management. The ITG IT Governance Framework Toolkit, and the complementary Calder-Moir IT Governance Framework, both help with these tasks.

The IT Governance Framework Toolkit contains nearly 1,600 pages of implementation resources, compatible with ISO/IEC 38500, including templates, guidelines, checklists, questionnaires, slide presentations, assessments and planning tools.

Calder continues: “Corporate governance in South Africa applies a code of principles and practices on a ‘Comply or Explain’ basis. Listed companies are expected to comply or explain, in their annual accounts, why they have not complied. If you want to make sure you do not fall foul of that process, you need the reliable support of products like our IT Governance Framework Toolkit.”

The ITG IT Governance Framework Toolkit is available as a CD-ROM and can be ordered online for 5,645 ZAR (£495/US$738.72/€544.42) at: http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/products/519.

The Calder-Moir IT Governance Framework aims to help organisations secure the maximum benefit from the many overlapping and competing IT-related management frameworks, standards and methodologies. This unique aid goes beyond any other product and helps organisations integrate recommended frameworks like COBIT, ISO/IEC 38500 and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), as well as providing simple tools to accelerate the governance planning and implementation processes. Anyone wishing to request a copy of the Calder-Moir IT Governance Framework, as well as a White Paper describing how to use the framework to drive an ISO/IEC 38500 IT governance project, should visit: http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/calder_moir.aspx.

An organisation looking for further practical guidance on implementing an IT framework can also turn to ITG’s IT Governance: Implementing Frameworks and Standards for the Corporate Governance of IT. This 210-page title is available in soft-cover format (ISBN: 9781905356911) and as a download, and can be ordered online for 455 ZAR (£39.95/US$59.62/€43.94) at: http://www.itgovernance.co.uk/products/2277.

Speaking at ‘Business Travel Market’ in London today, Dominic O’Regan, KDS’s solutions consultancy director, urged organisations to ensure total trip costs are calculated correctly and weighed against the benefit of the travel.

“Right now,” said O’Regan, “when the economic pressures on every business are so intense, it is more important than ever before to avoid unnecessary – and unnecessarily expensive – travel. The first step in that process is to know the likely total cost of a trip before the travel plans are approved. Are you going to spend more travelling than you will generate when you arrive? I cannot stress enough the importance of ROI in modern business travel.

“Monitoring costs such as flights and hotels can be a straightforward task but, all too often, factors such as travel management company (TMC) fees, lodge card spend and incidentals can be overlooked or forgotten. You only realise the actual total cost of the trip after the event, by when it’s too late to do anything. Perhaps you never truly realise the total trip cost at all. If you want to stop wasting money, you need comprehensive, reliable, easily-accessible and well-presented data from the very start of the travel management process.”

O’Regan concluded: “KDS’s fully-integrated technology helps corporate and TMC clients save money throughout the travel management process, including online self-booking and automated expense processing. We’re the only company to have built a truly unified end-to-end T&E solution from the outset, focused on our customers’ needs, and delivering real and tangible ROI.”

A conference and exhibition aimed at European travel buyers, ‘Business Travel Market’ concludes today at the ExCeL London convention centre. The two-day event attracts over 3,500 participants and around 100 exhibitors, from more than 20 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.