Nobody’s perfect. What quality or ability do you wish you had?
I wish I was someone who could function perfectly well on 4 hours sleep a day. There is so much to experience and achieve that sleeping 8 hours a day seems a waste.

What is the best business book you have ever read, and why?
I don’t as a rule read business books, but “Who Moved My Cheese” provided some valuable insights when I first read it in the 1990’s and those lessons have stayed with me.

Every businessman and woman knows the importance of meetings. A necessary evil they may be, meetings are vital for providing and receiving updates, communicating, planning, brainstorming and making decisions.

All too often, however, meetings take up an inordinate amount of time. But by focusing on meeting productivity, individuals and businesses can greatly reduce time wastage. In a business climate where time is precious, that’s an advantage many of us can’t afford not to take.

Zinc and aluminium prices reached unexpected levels on July 21 with zinc hitting a seven year high. London Metal Exchange zinc futures on the London Metals Exchange (LME) have risen to $1,255.50 a tonne - a price not reached since November 1997. Demand for the metals is driven by China which, as we have reported recently, has indicated above-expectation performance results in manufacturing and construction. AME Mineral Economics has said that world zinc consumption could rise 260,000 tonnes in 2005, resulting in a global deficit of 280,000 tonnes.

Huawei has also said it expects to return an operating profit of 18.3 percent for the six months to June this year. Last year Huawei reported a 10.8 percent rise in its first-half revenue. The company reported 12.2 percent growth in its operating margin in 2013.

To the disappointment of rival bidders Arriva, Keolis and National Express, the eight year concession to run Crossrail, the £15 billion project that will provide trains in an east-west link across London, with links to south London as well, has been granted to MTR. Short for Mass Transit Railway this is a company that operates nine urban lines in Hong Kong, and already runs London's Overground metro service in conjunction with Arriva.

The Vale do Rio Doce in Brazil is doubtless an idyllic place beauty as its name, valley of the peaceful river, implies. However the now more prosaically named Vale is a global company with which readers of Business Excellence are very familiar, most recently in our coverage of Vale's coal mining operations in Mozambique – and indeed, Wales.

“Business since we last spoke has been good for the company,” enthuses Adrok’s Managing Director, Gordon Stove. “We have been growing steadily and in the process increased our turnover for last year compared to that achieved in 2012. At the heart of this has been our ability to win more clients, and with this they have brought us fresh contracts and new sources of revenue. What that means is that at this time we are well on course to increase that turnover again for 2014, so things are going very nicely for us indeed.”

Between 1886 and the early 1970s the Central Rand Goldfield was intensively mined, with overall gold output estimated to have reached around 250 million ounces. All good things, as they say, must come to an end however and by the mid-70s a combination of factors including depressed gold prices, ageing infrastructure and the reduction in the availability of high grade reefs meant that the area was declared “worked out”.

The evidence is hard to refute: swapping spreadsheets for specialist commodity management solutions helps create a winning business that makes better decisions, faster, and with more confidence.

Eight reasons to unhitch and make the switch: