APRIL 2017 / ISSUE 3
Quarterly Insider
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Welcome. Welcome to the 1st Quarterly Insider of the new financial year. What a quarter it’s been?! We’ve smashed the start of 2017. We’ve released our amazing half year figures, increased our staff number to just under 300 and scooped the 7th Best Company award. Now we just need to reach 1st position next year – no pressure! In the last issue, we mentioned we would kick start our ANS Food Bank campaign to support Manchester South Central Food Bank and St George Martyr & St Jude Food Bank in London. We’ve already donated enough food to provide over 400 meals! So thank you to everyone who has donated either food, or money towards the great cause. As spring approaches, we’ve got some great events for you to get involved in, from the UKFast 10K and summer BBQ to Chester races and the Krypton Factor - make sure you check out the events on page 22. So take 10 minutes, pop the kettle on and enjoy reading through the magazine. As ever, thank you for your continued hard work. #ComeOnANS
Paul Shannon, CEO
Helen Thomas Writer Natalie Yates Graphic Designer
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Contents.
6 9 10
Quarterly Sales Update
The Latest from Finance
Our Latest Raving Fans
18 20 22
11
The Low Down from Marketing
23
12
Huddle- Introducing the take-away with a twist
24
14
Update from the Secure Operations Centre
2017 is the Year Service Providers become King of Cloud Services.
CSR- Committed to making a real difference
Dates for the Diary
We’re Hiring!
Competition Time
Quarterly Sales Update. Welcome to the Q4 ANS Sales update. All the Sales Directors are here to bring you the latest updates on recent business wins, pipeline business, team and personal achievements and highlights. We ended the year on a massive high with 11 Account Managers achieving over 75% of their target, and four people smashing over ÂŁ1 million.
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Business Development Team. We’ve had a fantastic quarter creating £138k pipeline opportunity with 53 meetings still to take place during Q1 which I’m sure will boost the pipeline figure even further. We’ve also been working closely with Rainking which is a Sales Intelligence portal, which is proving invaluable to the BDM team to gain more contacts and Bluesheet information. Rainking also provides up to date ‘Scoops’ which the BDMs can follow up on any snippets of recent information in relation to any account. We’ve also welcomed 6 new recruits in total – 4 in the London office and 2 up north. I’d also just like to pass on my congratulations to Richard Dakin who has been promoted to an ISAM role. Special reignition needs to go to Harry, Will and Alex Huson who all managed to get appointments in their 2nd week with the company, which is a great achievement. James Ghaedi has moved from the Public Sector team to Commercial team and is working closely with the Account Managers in the London office. All of the BDMs now have account aligned that are specific verticals which will make it easier for them to remain focused with marketing events and campaigns. // Jenny Shelbourne, Internal Sales Manager
Public Sector North. First off, I want to start by saying a huge congratulations and well done to Craig Daniels and Ed Knowles. In April 2016, we set the bar at half a million for Craig. He absolutely smashed it, delivering £634,577 by the end of Q4. Ed started off with an impressive target of £1.2m and he rounded off the year on a very comfortable £1.222,357. Well done guys, sterling effort. Onwards and upwards. Some of the key deals for Q4 included the University of Nottingham (generated £385,000 margin), Central Manchester University Hospital, and Shropshire Council. We’ve also welcomed a new starter into the team this quarter, Russ Evans who has joined us from Logicalis. Russ has integrated really well into the team and has already got a couple of good university opportunities in the pipeline. Welcome to the team, mate. Thanks to the whole team for their hard work over 2016/2017. It’s time to draw breath and kick ass again! // Gareth Ainsworth, Group Sales Director
Public Sector South. My team have done really well in Q4. Matt Whelan has absolutely smashed his sales target – well done mate. I’d also like to give a shout out to Yasin for winning 2 net new Higher Education logos (FXPlus and GSM). Harry has resurrected a customer and has popped his cherry by closed a deal in a very dormant customer. Top effort!! As the London sales teams continue to grow, Alex and Naz are now turning their attention to focus on the Public Sector and both are finding some great opportunities. One key win for us in Q4 was the Maritime and Coastguard Agency who have resigned for a further 2 years on another Fully Managed contract to support their National blue lights network and data centres. In other news, Salisbury’s RA outputs have just been completed which will enable them to transform their entire data centre estate. We’re hoping for loads more opportunities in Q1 so watch this space! // David Vukomanovic, Sales Director Public Sector South
Enterprise North.
Commercial North.
Enterprise North hit 114% of the MS Target for 2016/17 and Ryan McKnight has smashed his target which firmly places him in the exclusive high achiever’s club which means he’ll be heading off to somewhere exotic later on in the year.
Q4 was pretty good for Commercial North… strong team effort! Highlights include three new logos. A new 3yr Global WAN contract (Alex Hartley), a new 3yr 50 site UK WAN contract (Si Chilcott) and our first Private IAAS solution on a 5yr contract (Dan Huckle). James Keeler was promoted to Account Manager, Richard Dakin was promoted to ISAM and Steve McLachlan joined as Senior Account Manager from Verizon to help bolster the team and grow business in the North East.
We won some key deals in Q4 which included Greencore (£150k), Greene King (£65k) Paragon Financial (£40k) and a good Managed Cloud deal with Bright HR. Our pipeline for this first half of this year is looking really strong thanks to a good mix of new business and true enterprise accounts. Some of the key deals we’ll be focusing on in Q1 include RRG and Speedy which are both WAN deals being driven by Dom. Nick is heading up a strong RAPID project worth half a million with Prudential Financial and we’ve got a Public Cloud op worth £200k with Chris. We also can’t forget the two new additions to the team. Recently welcomed Lyndon Hughes and Jamie Gruhn, both of which are settling in really well. Come on team, it’s time to smash Q1!!
// Robin Lee, Sales Director Enterprise North
Enterprise South. If I could sum up Q4 for Enterprise South in a single word it would be ‘Frustrating’ – but for all the right reasons! Whilst the number booked was low (270k with 31% MS) we had close to £1m slip into Q1 which give us a great start to this year. I’m over the moon for Dave Lillywhite who has had a massive year, finishing Top of the Pops #1 with close to £1.8m – same again please Lilly! The team also welcomed five new members, Nathan was promoted for the second time in 12 months into an AM which is huge and testament to a lot of hard work on his part, well deserved. Danny ‘I Freeze Mcdonalds Cheeburgers’ Lesage also joined us from Logicalis, with him he brought an infectious appetite to find and close business. We’ve also grown the BDM team - both Harry and Will are already booking meetings, pitching ANS and getting results under the tutorage of James Ghaedi who’s transferred over from the Pub Sec team, James is doing great and it won’t be long before we see him progressing into bigger things. In conclusion, we had a good year, the team has grown both in numbers and ability, Rich has huge prospects with some massive projects, Doug has got into some very exciting fights with WAN and this sets us up for a massive FY18, It’s important to recognise that all of this is a real team effort throughout the sales cycle, with huge help from Sales Ops, Pre Sales, The Consultants, Legal, Service Management, Managed services and the Exec Team. // Jo Feldman, Regional Head
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In a number… the net contribution from Commercial North in Q4 will equate to circa £3m in total contracted profits to ANS. That’s £1m in first year profit and a further £2m in annualised profits spread out in Managed Service over the next 2 – 5 years. Well done guys, you all deserve a pat on the back.
// Russell Crowley, Sales Director Commercial North
The Latest from Finance.
With year-end finally over, we can now breathe again but not before celebrating all the exam success we’ve had during the last quarter. Adam Pritchard has passed the Credit Management exam, Suren has passed his Budgeting Exam and Catherine has passed her Cost & Revenues exam – a massive well done to all of them, they’ve put in a lot of work and their efforts have definitely paid off. We’d also like to say well done to Oliver who has recently passed his probation period with flying colours. Once a week Adam is gaining experience in credit control to broaden his knowledge and put some experience against his qualifications. His experience in this area will provide some much needed support for Paul and Pam when cover is required Pranay is currently studying for his AAT exams and will now be spending one day a week in the
Finance team to broaden his knowledge and gain experience to help him with his exam prep. This quarter we’re turning our attention to the annual financial audit. To prepare for this we need to collate all the finances all together from the last financial year. It’s a huge piece of work collating lots of information, doing reconciliations etc. A financial audit is the process where it is checked that we are processing everything correctly, following accounting standards and procedures and not hiding money/committing fraud etc. We’re still recruiting for a Management Accountant, so if you think you know the ideal candidate, let them know we’re hiring. The full job description can be found here: ans.peoplehr.net // Lisa Emsley, Director of Finance
Our Latest Raving Fans. It is our goal to achieve industry leading PR for ANS and our customers, recognising the innovative solutions we collaboratively provide for organisations and their community of users. We aim to sign up 200 Raving Fans to our customer satisfaction programme, which will only be achieved by maintaining the current exceptional level of service to our customers. This quarter we have welcomed the following Raving Fans...
Turn customers into Raving Fans. At ANS, there is no such thing as the bare minimum. We endeavour to always go above and beyond for our customers, and every project is a chance for us to deliver first-class solutions and welcome customers into our Raving Fan Club. Our Raving Fans know there’s more to a great customer relationship than technical knowledge or timely delivery – those may be the building blocks of our success, but for them it’s about partnering with a company that they can trust, a company that they enjoy working with and a company that is just as invested in their success as they are.
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The Low Down from Marketing.
This quarter Hubspot has continued to assist us in delivering targeted, sector specific campaigns. So far we’ve published 10 campaigns across Q3 and Q4 with a 19% open rate (industry average is 20%) and 6% click through rate (industry average is 2.3%). These campaigns have helped us to generate 19 meetings which has generated £234,375 pipeline opportunity already! Public Cloud is a key growth area for the business in FY18. In order to position ourselves as the UK’s number 1 Public Cloud Provider we aim to win a Public Cloud award this year. We’re also going to be BOLD in our messaging (if you read a piece of content and you don’t think we’re being bold enough, be sure to let us know!) Recently we’ve found our sector specific led content is making a huge impact on our targets so we’ll be creating much more of this content in tailored campaigns. We’ve also been refining our messaging around ‘Managed Networks and Platforms’ and will be launching new seminars and roundtables to support our WAN, intrastate and cloud offerings. The following events are already scheduled: Commercial South CIO Roundtable – Tuesday 9th May Public Sector North CIO Roundtable – Thursday 11th May Commercial North CIO Roundtable – Thursday 25th May
Aside from the roundtables, we’re hosting our second round of Public Cloud events scheduled for June in Manchester and London. If you know of a customer who would benefit in attending, send them our way! Building the Cloud Ready Network – Tuesday 16th May (South) Thursday 18th May (North) Architecting a Multi-Cloud Strategy – Tuesday 20th June (South) Thursday 22nd June (North) Further Reading: • ANS announces half year revenues of over £33m • Renewed Cisco Certifications ensures ANS’ Offerings remain Globally Unique • ANS Storm 75 Places to rank as the 7th Best Company to Work for in the UK • Shannon takes the reins at ANS
// Olivia Jaskolka, Director of Marketing
Huddle - Introducing the take-away with a twist. At last week’s All Staff event, Paul Shannon mentioned that HR will be introducing ‘Huddle’ sessions to help the business improve crossdepartmental communications. To make sure we’re all clued up, I caught up with Katy Rawlinson, Training and Personnel Coordinator to get the low down on all things ‘Huddle’.
won’t be too formal. After the first few months we will hopefully be able to get a few more people involved and nominate a small team to ‘chair’ the meetings. How did the idea of Huddle come about?
Communication between departments is an issue which pops up regularly, it was a prominent bugbear in the last internal survey and has been suggested as one of the improvement points in recent ‘Huddle’ is the name we’ve given to lunch time sessions that are being exit interviews. We want to do as much as we can to improve this. introduced to improve internal cross-departmental communications. As well as discussing problems, improvements and work related A group of employees from different departments will get together things, Huddle will be a great chance to get to know people you may to help improve ANS. It’s similar to the ‘Lunch with the CEO’ concept never speak to in your day to day working life. By getting to know but for employees only. It will be a great chance to try and identify other members of staff in the business, it makes it a lot easier to and solve problems, work on improving approach them when you need to draw on processes and enhance communication skills, ask for advice or even just start “As well as discussing problems, their between departments. a conversation when you bump into them in improvements and work related the kitchen! things, huddle will be a great And how will the process work? chance to get to know people you And most importantly, what will be on the Huddle sessions will be hosted once a month. may never speak to in your day to menu for lunch? Ten people will be nominated by their line day working life.” managers to represent their department. Actually it’s yet to be decided, I’ve got an The selected ten will then attend the 1 hour idea but I’m more than happy to listen to session over lunch. A loose agenda will be included in the invite and suggestions as an alternative usual dominos/Philpotts options. If we will encourage you to discuss this agenda with your teams so anyone has any ideas please let me know. you can attend the Huddle armed with some issues, updates and topics of conversation. After the Huddle, a report will be sent out to everyone involved with a summary of the outcomes and actions. Thanks for your time Katy. Just on a closing note, when can we expect to see the first Huddle session popping up? Who will lead the sessions? The first session will be launching on Thursday 4th May so keep your I will lead the first few sessions to keep up the energy and keep the eyes peeled for an invitation in your inbox, you might just be part of conversation flowing. We want these sessions to be as productive as the first group of lucky participants! possible so we will try and stick to the agenda to get through as much as possible but there will always be room for a chat and a laugh, it Hi Katy, so Paul Shannon mentioned we’d be launching Huddle at the All Staff, but what exactly is Huddle?
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Help us Stamp Out Hunger in Manchester Donate items to our food bank throughout this year to help feed people in crisis in Hulme, Moss Side & Whalley Range. Drop your items off at the Food Bank in the Sales Wing opposite the sales team.
Update from the Secure Operations Centre. Managed Services. We’ve had a number of movers and shakers in the teams over the last quarter. Matt Whitfield is now the Team Leader of the Backup and Recovery Team. Matt will still be responsible for designing, implementing and supporting the products and will bring in his team to support him. Dan Scorah is now the Team leader of the Cloud Services team. Similar to Matt, he will still be leading his team and designing, implementing and supporting Cloud services. To add to the changes, Richard Pugh has moved into the DC Ops team from 2nd Line, Sam Smith has moved from DC Ops to Platform Apps and Bryan Powell has moved from Shift to Event Management – phew that’s a lot of movement! This quarter we’ve gained one new starter, Adil Yunus who has joined us as a Technical Analyst and is settling in really well. We’ve hired a further two 3rd Line network team members who are due to start next month. Turning our attention to the ANS Academy, the apprentices are all doing very well and are now moving into more challenging roles within the 2nd line. Time to boss it guys and gals! But what I really want to draw your attention to is our outstanding individual achievements this quarter. Not only have the vast majority of the MS team completed their Bullet Proof Manager courses but we’ve seen an amazing number of exam passes throughout the service desk. Ryan Froggatt, Dave Randle and Johnny Hall have all completed NetApp Support Services Certified (SSC) certifications to keep ANS as a support partner. // Steve Breen, Head of Managed Services
Professional Services Team. This quarter we’re pleased to have improved the relationship with the GSTT team which has helped to get some long-awaited progress on the migrations. More good news comes in the shape of the Peel Ports WAN circuits, which have finally been delivered to Rotherdam and Dublin after a year long battle with the carriers. And in other news the phase 1 of the AJ Bell deployment has been completed, meaning we can add another satisfied customer to the list! In Q4 we also turned our attention to several WAN specific documents and process guides which have been created by the PM team to support the ongoing integration of WAN into Professional Services. Recently Jordan Bridge and Aaron Dove have passed their Prince2 qualification – well done lads, top work! Graham Fildes is now a VMware VCP6-DC, NetApp Certified Storage Installation Engineer (NCSIE) and Alun Grifiths has passed the 2 day NetApp Partner 7-mode to cDOT 8.3 Data Migration session. Well done guys! We’ve also welcomed a new starter this quarter – Rotem Friedin who has joined us as a Senior Project Manager. He has settled in amazingly well and has already got his teeth stuck into a number of projects. Kirsty Anderson has recently been promoted to Project Co-ordinator and former ANS Apprentice and Alex Clifford has joined Professional Services as a Project Administration Apprentice. //Rachel Sackfield, Portfolio Manager
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Service Management. We’re chuffed to welcome back Melissa Johnson after maternity leave. Mel will be working 1 day per week covering the Service Manager renewals and customer quality checks. This quarter we’ve teamed up with Marketing to launch loads of fresh up-to-date content. This includes the new Service Management slide deck, Public Cloud SD and Managed Service Handbook. In other news, the new automated service management review report has now been released with improved graphs and narrative. In terms of team developments the only thing I have to report is that Charlie Courtney has moved from 2nd Line Shift to Service management supporting Alex Carroll as a Service management Coordinator focussing on WAN customers. // Steve Breen, Head of Managed Services
Development Team. Last quarter the Dev team has been busy developing GLASS 3.1 which is due to be releases shortly. The release primarily focuses on integrating with ANS’ wide area networking solution, Solarwinds. Our customers will soon be benefitting from enhanced functionality which is being added to both the portal and the mobile app. New features include: • Active Alerts • Top 10 Interfaces by Percent Utilisation • Top 10 Capacity Statistics • Down Nodes • Availably of Nodes • Interfaces and Nodes • Ability to add multiple LogicMonitor devices into scheduled downtime As part of the ongoing Business Systems project, significant improvements have been made to the performance and stability of SOS. As on ongoing task, good progress is being made to migrating existing Java functionality into the HTML interface. The Contracts Item Import Tool has been enhanced so that it can be utilised to import WAN items into SOS in bulk. The will provide a mechanism to import the WAN items for the Eison related customers. In other news, additional dashboard functionality has also been developed for the Service Desk to provide a weekly overview. // Tom Barrand, Head of IT and Business Systems
Exam Passes. Commvault Implementation & Maintenance v11 - Commvault Professional
Cisco CCNA (200-105 ICND1)
• • •
Windows Server Administration fundamentals
Will Thai Ashley Stokes James Ambler
ITILv3 Foundation • • • • •
Will Thai Dave Carroll Mark Steen Lewis Froggatt Charlie Courtney
74-409: Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V & System Center •
Mark Steen
Commvault Core Fundamentals v11 • •
Ashley Stokes Will Thai
•
• •
Tyla Boff
Andrew Robertson Anton McFarlane
NetApp Certified Data Administrator ONTAP (NS0-158) • •
Thomas Goreham Platforms: Jack Cottrill
VCP6-DCV •
Platforms: Mike Stubbs
Platforms: NetApp NS0-191 & NS0-092 • • •
Johnny Hall David Randle Ryan Froggatt
411: Installing & Configuring Windows Server 2012
Fortinet NSE 4
•
•
Masood Mohammed
533: Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions MCSE: Cloud Platform & Infrastructure 2017 •
Richard Smith
Implementing Citrix NetScaler 10.5 for App & Desktop Solutions •
Steve Hanley
Advanced Infrastructure Design Commvault Certified Engineer •
Chris Burgess
Cisco CCENT (100-105 ICND1) •
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Callum Sutton
Jose Micaela
AWS Sysops – Associate • •
Dan Scorah Dave Howe
Well done guys!
We are the 7th Best Company to work for in the UK as voted by the Sunday Times. Thank you for helping us to build an even better business. #ComeOnANS
57% of IT leaders expect to partner with Managed Servic Providers (MSP) and Manage Hosting Providers (MHP) for hy cloud/multi-cloud implementatio management support.
2017 is the Year Service Providers become King of Cloud Services.
55% are planning to work with public cloud In as a Service (IaaS) providers and 53% are p work with security service providers. The fi reflect how successful MSPs are at broad the breadth of services and supporte platforms they are providing today and plan to in the future.
The ‘Digital Transformation Opportunity for Service Providers: Beyond Infrastructure’ survey has revealed business priorities, cloud adoption and buying intentions and was presented by the Microsoft executives and product leaders during their 13th Annual Cloud and Hosting Summit held in Bellevue, Washington earlier this year. Check out the results.
Hosted Private Cloud (66%), Dedicated Servers (61%) and Public Cloud/Infrastructure-asa-Service (IaaS) (60%) are the three most popular infrastructure services IT leaders plan to use in the coming year.
Despite the hype surrounding bare metal servers, only 39% of IT leaders are including them in their plans for the coming year.
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Top adoption drivers of hybrid multi- cloud environments include flexibility & choice of where workloads can operate (64%), extending IT resource capacity (56%), and maximizing the return of existing on-premises IT investments (56%).
Establishing the right balance between speed, agility, innovation and security & risk is often the leading factor for cloud adoption in small & medium businesses and fast-growing enterprise business units. The IT leaders interviewed expect hybrid/multi-cloud environments to flex and meet their specific workload requirements. 49% of IT leaders also are adopting hybrid cloud/multi-cloud environments to migrate workloads between private/public cloud and on-premises/off-premises environments. This is one of the key factors driving Oracle to move so quickly to deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Oracle customers continue to move database workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other cloud platforms, looking for flexibility in how they optimize workloads.
o ce ed ybrid on and
Globally, 31% of IT leaders plan on focusing on just a single cloud environment over the next two years.
nfrastructure planning to findings adening ed y
The more mature an organization becomes at enabling business processes with cloud-based apps, the more they migrate to a unified, integrated cloud platform. The following graphic illustrates the growth progression of organizations as the move away from multiple, disconnected off- and onpremise cloud platforms to support a business function to a single cloud environment.
VMWare vCloud Air (54%), Microsoft Azure (45%) and IBM SoftLayer (53%) are the top three IaaS/Public Cloud service providers IT organizations’ service providers most partner with.
These findings are consistent with comparable surveys that reflect VMWare’s dominance in enterprises and Azure’s rapid.
Cloud Management Platforms (64%), Private Clouds (63%), Integration Services (57%) and Cloud Automation and Orchestration (56%) are the top four hybrid /multi-cloud capabilities IT leaders are considering purchasing from a service provider. 34% of organizations have a broad implementation of production apps on cloud platforms today, with another 18% initially implementing production apps.
Combined, 52% of IT organizations surveyed are now relying on cloud platforms for their production applications. This is consistent with many conversations and briefings with CIOs, VPs of Infrastructure and IT leaders who say the cloud is now incidental to the business strategies they need to accomplish. CIOs are quickly becoming business strategists that rely on their IT organizations for help attaining challenging, complex revenue goals.
Additional services IT leaders are considering purchasing from service providers include Application and Workload Migration (55%), Building and Implementation Services (46%), Cloud Brokerage and Marketplace Solutions (46%), Advisory and Planning Services (41%) and Workload Placement (40%). The following graphic compares infrastructure services purchase interest by global region.
Update from the CSR team.
The CSR team is expanding! Three new members have joined us this quarter - we’d like to say a big warm welcome to Sheryl, Andy Porter and Julia Walsh. It’s been almost 3 months since we launched the ANS Food Bank and we’ve been overwhelmed by your generosity. Just to put things into perspective, the Manchester team has already donated the equivalent of over 400 meals and raised £180 for their Easter event. The London team has also been donating generously for their local food bank and now have thee boxes full, ready to donate. A sterling effort from both offices – thank you to everyone who has donated! Forever Manchester Tombola Once a quarter, our Champagne Friday donations will go towards buying raffle tickets in aid of Forever Manchester. The tickets will then be popped into a hat, along with other businesses who have bought tickets and four winners will be selected. The top prize is often a holiday so it’s definitely worth entering. If we are lucky enough to receive a winning ticket then the prize will be given to the most deserving person at the upcoming All Staff-all the more reason to get donating on the first Friday of every month! Alternatively, if you’d like to
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purchase your own tickets, you can do so by contacting myself. Give a little bit of your time CSR isn’t always about donating money. Nothing is more precious than your time. Children at the Factory Youth Zone can really benefit from spending time with us, even if it’s just an hour every 2 weeks. Whether you just want to keep a child company or teach them a new skill, they’d be delighted that you gave up some of your precious time for them. Katy Rawlinson has recently started volunteering at the Factory and described the experience as ‘extremely rewarding’ she goes on to say, “I volunteer every other Wednesday 6:30pm-10pm with kids aged 13-19, it’s such an amazing productive place for the kids to go. My biggest highlight so far was helping the kids with additional needs make apple crumble. It’s really rewarding to see them all doing stuff they would probably never have the chance to do without the FYZ.” We will also be opening up volunteering opportunities at the Manchester South Central food bank in June. If you would like more information about volunteering opportunities please email csr@ansgroup.co.uk
Activities to Look Forward to… We’ve got loads of brilliant CSR events to look coming up. Check them out below and make a note!
• 21st May – Dragon Boat Race – Contact CSR Team asap if interested! • 2nd – 11th June - Forever Manchester week. • 9th July - 10k Run – Get Fundraising!! 6 spare spaces – Anyone interested in entering please contact CSR Team. • Friday 14th July - Shannon’s Sausage Fest – Tuck into a sausage or bacon butty on Shannon! • Summer - Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge (date TBC). • 9th September - North West Tough Mudder. • 23rd September - London South Tough Mudder. • 23rd September – Krypton Factor Gala Dinner
Dates for the Diary.
Jun
It’s almost time for the highly anticipated annual sales kick off event in Birmingham. Prepare to roll up your sleeves and get motivated to hit your sales targets in 2017/2018. There will be plenty of time to let your hair down afterwards at the meal and evening out.
5-9th- Forever Manchester week Get ready for a week of amazing daily events and fundraising activities.
July
It’s time to show UKFast who’s boss! We’ll be participating in the Manchester 10K. Join us after the race for burgers, kebabs and nibbles at our summer BBQ on the terrace of Manchester Townhouse.
July
9th- UKFast 10k & Summer BBQ
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May
5th- Sales Kick Off
29th- Chester Races Saddle up and place your bets! Why not join us for a day at the races, a three-course meal and a few drinks on ANS!
We’re Hiring! A career at ANS means more than you think... We are always on the lookout for energetic, positive individuals who can add value to our team and ensure that we stay at the cutting edge of technology. The secret to our success is fulfilling our three principles of success; right customers, right technology and right people. Browse the job vacancies below and be sure to share the roles with your network. Account Managers
Management Accountant
We’re looking for four Account Managers to join our Manchester and London offices. The ideal candidates will be motivated and passionate about delivering results. Being able to hunt out new accounts and create opportunities is fundamental to the success of this role. All four positions are listed below.
We’re looking for a Management Accountant with previous experience in practical management accounts exposure and an excellent understanding of Excel, Word, Outlook and Sage 200. The successful candidate will be responsible for creating and updating KPIs, assisting with yearend statutory accounts and liaising with external auditors.
Public Sector -South Commercial – South Public Sector – North Commercial - South IT Apprentices We’re looking for new apprentices to help grow an expanding IT Service Desk. The successful candidate will be fully supported throughout with their IT qualifications and will receive full training with helping customers and their managed service environments. Do you know someone who may be interested? Share this fantastic opportunity with them today. Solutions Architect An opportunity has arisen to build out the current Solution Architects team focusing on the Infrastructure Platform solutions that ANS Offers in both London and Manchester. In particular, we are looking for candidates with a strong Hosting & Managed Service background to support the expanding hosted infrastructure offering. Do you know the right person for this role? Share it with them today.
Do you know someone looking to progress their career in finance? Share this opportunity with them today.
Competition Time. Are you up for a challenge? Put your brain to the test by completing our mini puzzles for your chance to win a ÂŁ25 Amazon voucher. Correctly complete at least two puzzles and your name will be put into a draw to win the voucher.
Mind Over Matter Break the code to discover the missing letter. Hint: A-Z = 1-26
To enter the competition please email your answers to helen.thomas@ansgroup.co.uk before 20th February 2017. Good luck!
What are the four hidden words in the image?
Trivia 1 Where would you find the Sea of Tranquility? 2 Which sport does Constantino Rocca play? 3 How many hearts does an octopus have?
Brain Teaser
You will always find me in the past. I can be created in the present, but the future can never taint me. What am I?
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