BUSINESS NETWORX
strong growth at smart it
firm looks to increase staff headcount
W W W . TEAM V ALLE Y P U B LICATIONS . CO . UK ISS U E # 2 3 • O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
APPS AND GADGETS REVIEWING 5 WORTHY MOBILE APPS
NORTH EAST EXPORTS POST-BREXIT TRADE SURPLUS RETAINED
SYNERGI PAIRS WITH NORTHUMBRIAN WATER automation software rollout
E M P L O Y E E SATIS F A C TION How staff loyalty can have positive effect on performance In a s s o c i at i o n w i th :
T H E T E A M V A L L E Y T R A D I N G E S TAT E ’ S N U M B E R O N E B U S I N E S S F O C U S M A G A Z I N E
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Gateshead security firm sees optic growth A Gateshead security company has expanded thanks to several new contract wins and investment in its fibre optic service, which has led to increased demand. CJ Electratech which specialises in CCTV, fibre optic termination and access control systems, is seeing a multi-thousandpound investment in specialist fibre optic equipment pay off.
reflectometer (OTDR) to terminate or analyse and improve the performance of fibre cabling infrastructure. Maintaining a reliable fibre plant is essential in protecting business-critical applications.
“Through on-the-job training and support from Access’ training programme, Joe and Callum are proving to be great employees; they are learning fast and delivering great results for us.”
The firm, which was set up by directors Chris Finn and John Knotts in 2005, has contracts with HMRC, HMP, HMCS and has recently won a contract with St James Park to maintain and service their CCTV system.
The firm has struggled to recruit engineers in the past because many specialise in one aspect of security and CJ Electratech require its technicians that work across all their services.
CJ Electratech install and maintain a wide variety of security systems for commercial clients based from Sheffield to Glasgow.
CJ Electratech has partnered with Gateshead-based Access Training to recruit two apprentices to help them service the new business. The latest apprentice to join the business is Callum Callender, 18, from Gateshead. He follows in the footsteps of another apprentice trained by Access Training on behalf of Electratech - Joe Hood. Joe is studying for his Advanced Level 3 in Installing Security Systems. The firm use the high-tech fibre optic fusion splicer and optical time domain
Access Training, based on the Team Valley, works with many companies in the North East security sector to supply and train their apprentices. Director, Chris Finn, said: “New opportunities have been coming in thick and fast so we knew it was time to grow the team. Investing in apprentices is a good option for us because we can mould them to fit our business exactly. “Apprentices also tend to stay where they trained for a long time which is a big advantage for us.
Access Training has apprentice places available on its Security Technician Apprenticeship programme starting in September. For information call Valerie Green on 0191 490 4652 or www.accesstraining.org.uk Access Training has offices on the Team Valley in Gateshead. They offer a wide range of apprenticeships including social media & digital marketing, accounting, business administration, customer service, manufacturing, warehousing, IT, also management & team leading.
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News
‘We are an ambitious council’, says Gateshead, following £54m investment programme Gateshead Council’s end of year report has showed nearly £54m of investment in the town, despite financial challenges faced in 2015-16. The investment programme included almost £18m of investment in housing, including ongoing improvements to more than 1,100 existing council properties. There was £9m of investment in carbon management and sustainability projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions and generating ongoing savings. Projects include the innovative District Energy Scheme, which is expected to become operational by this autumn, installing solar PV panels on over 30 Council buildings and schools as well as street lighting improvements and energy efficient lighting upgrades. There was £6m of investment in Council’s transport infrastructure, including highway maintenance schemes and sustainable transport improvements. The borough’s schools benefitted from over £5m of improvements, including increasing capacity in schools. Another £2.6m of investment in the Council’s Accelerated Development Zone is helping to bring forward development at Gateshead Quays and Baltic Business Quarter, generating economic growth. Gateshead Council leader, Councillor Martin Gannon, said: “We are an ambitious council, despite the serious financial challenges we face. “We continue to invest in long-term projects that will improve the lives of our residents and businesses, including affordable housing and transport infrastructure. “We are also nearing completion of the pioneering Gateshead District Energy Scheme that will generate low-carbon heat and power locally for supply to public buildings, homes and businesses in Gateshead town centre.”
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Small and medium-sized businesses based in the North of England are most concerned about their reputation according to new research.
Reputation management biggest concern for Northern businesses The research, conducted by Broker Network and Charterhouse Research on behalf of Gateshead based insurance broker, NC Insurance, found that 30% of small and medium-sized businesses listed their reputation as a high or extreme risk to their business, a higher percentage than any other common business concern. A total of 538 small and medium-sized businesses (businesses with under 250 employees) around the UK were surveyed on the areas of their business that they were most concerned about, with 103 Northern SMEs listing which of 10 common business concerns they felt were a risk for them. The study also found that changes within the industry was also a common concern for Northern SMEs with 27% of those surveyed listing it as a risk to their business, along with data protection & cybercrime which was also a concern for 27% of Northern businesses surveyed. By contrast, legal issues were the least pressing concern for Northern SMEs with just 10% of surveyed businesses perceiving it as a high or extreme risk to them. These results for Northern businesses closely mirror the concerns of businesses
on a national level with 30% of all businesses surveyed perceiving their reputation as a high or extreme risk, making it the most commonly voiced concern for SMEs across the UK. Commenting on the findings Mark Burdett, Sales & Marketing Director at NC Insurance said; “These findings show that reputation management and the way others perceive their brand is extremely important and because of this, it’s crucial that they take care to manage their image. Taking care of customers and providing the best possible service is vital as this ensures that the only talk about their business is positive. Conducting professional risk management surveys of their business will also help them avoid the sort of health and safety incidents that can lead to bad publicity while having access to legal advice and crisis management is crucial for diffusing situations that could otherwise be reputation-damaging.” Sourced from www.bdaily.co.uk. Receive the Bdaily business news bulletin by registering at www.bdaily.co.uk/register
HOW TO GAUGE EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION It’s good to know that employees are engaged with their role and the business as this has a positive effect on staff performance, attendance and retention. Staff loyalty can also engage customer loyalty through building of trust and relationships.
Gateshead electronic vehicle manufacturer Sevcon reveals £126m sales pipeline
There are some simple ways in which you can measure the satisfaction of your employees and several of these can be done anonymously so that people feel able to be honest.
Electronic vehicle manufacturer Sevcon has revealed it is working on a series of projects which could be worth as much as £126m to the Gateshead-based business over the coming years.
• Ask the question at probation reviews, informal one to ones, appraisals - a good opportunity to get some feedback. People can become dissatisfied in their job if they feel they have nothing left to learn, so ask about work interests and what would motivate them. Find out about aspirations too and be realistic about what the company can offer.
One of the projects is a £28m contract with a British supercar company, announced earlier this year, while a second is with a South East Asian tier one supplier, which could be worth up to £35m.
• A general suggestion box - provide an opportunity for people to give ideas for change or improvement anonymously. Remind staff of where the box is placed and welcome suggestions.
• Surveys - these can be done free and anonymously. These can contain a list of standard questions on a score scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree, and also some open questions so feedback can be input. If you do these regularly you can build up a picture of key work aspects such as motivation and satisfaction. It is always important that you analyse the results and give an overview. There should also be an action plan for working on the areas that you want to improve on. Telephone: 0800 533 5143 Email: HR@mcdougallconsultancy.com Website: www.mcdougallconsultancy.com Address: Tanfield Lea Business Centre, Tanfield Lea North Industrial Estate, Stanley, Co. Durham, DH9 9DB
Sevcon is unable to reveal further specifics on the remaining contacts, although President Matt Boyle disclosed that the firm is currently in further talks with one of the four on an additional deal, which could add a further £30m to this pipeline. Mr Boyle revealed: “We currently have four major projects in our on-road development pipeline, with two expected to go into production in 2017, one in 2019 and one in 2020. “In total, we expect production revenue to be approximately $166m (£126m) over the five-to-seven-year production lives of the projects, although none is guaranteed. “We have five major milestones to accomplish on these projects between now and the end of 2017, with the first targeted for the first quarter of 2017.”
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Gateshead-based Smart IT is looking to grow staff numbers after enjoying significant growth in the last 12 months.
Tony Wilson, MD at Gateshead’s Smart IT.
Headcount at Team Valley ICT firm approaches 30 following strong growth Profits at the Team Valley provider of ICT solutions have jumped by 22% in the past year as demand from public and private sector SME clients have pushed turnover at the firm to almost £2m. Smart IT’s Managing Director, Tony Wilson, who founded the company in 2008, believes the firm’s ‘people-driven’ approach has fuelled client demand and allowed it to compete in a crowded marketplace.
on creating a high level of customer satisfaction through providing a more personable service.” Based out of Team Valley Trading Estate, the ICT firm now boast a headcount of just under 30 IT professionals all with expertise in areas including infrastructure solutions, hardware and software, and telephony integration.
He said: “In my opinion, people buy people and I think that’s given us an edge in a pretty crowded market.
The firm, which is headed up by a sixstrong senior management team, is now looking to expand its number of clients and grow its headcount in the coming months.
“Being smaller than some of our major competitors also enables us to make quick decisions and, in turn, focus
With accreditations and partnership status for a range of IT firms, including Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and Cisco,
“Being smaller than some of our major competitors enables us to make quick decisions” 12 | www.teamvalleypublications.co.uk
Tony says that the Gateshead business’ approach, where they are not tied to just one product, has also helped them to grow their client base and reputation. He added: “I think our differentiator is that we are not orientated around products - rather we use products to deliver the right service for clients. “Many companies will try to shoehorn a product into a customer’s business, we try to find the best product for the customer’s needs. In short, we are one of the few mid-market IT providers in the region who is big enough to effectively manage client demand but small enough to really care about delivering a personal, bespoke customer experience.”
Sourced from www.bdaily.co.uk. Receive the Bdaily business news bulletin by registering at www.bdaily.co.uk/register
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Manufacturing
Fall in Sterling boosts North East exports but manufacturing outlook remains mixed Manufacturing in the region has reflected the mixed national outlook as output remained static in the last three months, according to a survey of the sector by manufacturer’s organisation EEF and business advisers BDO LLP. However, the fall in the value of Sterling as a result of June’s referendum has sent export levels surging to their highest levels since the second quarter of 2014 with export orders moving into positive territory in the third quarter to +2%. According to the survey, +40% of the region’s manufacturing firms who were surveyed hope to increase output in the next three months in a sign that some confidence is returning to the sector after the initial Brexit shock which sent confidence plummeting. That said, a majority of companies still had no plans to hire new employees while investment plans remain on the backburner, presumably while manufacturing firms look to ride out the uncertainty and get a clearer picture of the UK’s long-term economic prospects. Liz Mayes, North East Region Director at EEF, said that, while the boost in exports
and the slight rebound in confidence are reasons to be positive, there was still a great amount of uncertainty swirling through the industry. She commented: “Manufacturers’ confidence collapsed in the aftermath of the referendum, but our latest survey provides some relief that this has corrected. “Signs of an export revival are helping to drive more optimism about activity in the second half of the year, but concerns about whether the UK economy can shrug off post-referendum challenges are still clearly evident. “These risks are expected to hit some sectors, such as industries linked to investment goods and construction, harder than others. “Despite the short-term outlook for manufacturing remaining broadly stable, the continued downward slide
in investment plans should keep policy makers alive to the potential risks facing the sector.” The EEF revised its growth forecasts back in June in the wake of the EU referendum down to 1.7% in 2015 and 0.8% for 2016. However, the modest rebound in confidence has meant the group has actually revised up its manufacturing output projections to 0.4% this year and -1.1% in 2017, but clearly more still needs to be done. “The Government needs to proceed quickly in developing an ambitious industrial strategy to make the UK an attractive proposition for future manufacturing investment. This will become even more critical once negotiations to leave the EU begin and Article 50 is triggered,” added Liz. Source: bdaily.co.uk
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Industrials
Gateshead’s Synergi pairs up with Northumbrian Water for workflow tech Technology firm Synergi are working with Northumbrian Water to rollout workflow automation software as part of wider investment by the water supplier in new technology services. The Gateshead firm have been charged with integrating Nintex workflow automation software for Northumbrian Water’s 2,900-strong workforce which the water company hopes will deliver significant efficiency savings and provide added security for information stored on its systems. New Microsoft Cloud, Office 365 and SharePoint services are also to be integrated across the water firm’s wider operations as it looks to revolutionise its work processes with new software.
“Our investment will not only provide long term efficiency savings but ensure staff have the latest IT tools and resources to hand to work quicker and smarter as the business develops”
Synergi have sealed a number of public and private sector clients after attaining an international Nintex Partner Award at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, and will now work closely with Northumbrian Water to provide licensing, software planning and app development support. Alan Sherwen, who is part of Northumbrian Water’s information system (IS) team, said that the partnership is part of the firm’s efforts to provide its staff with the latest tools that will help them do their jobs more efficiently.
Northumbrian Water’s Anthony Marriner (left) with Synergi’s Justin Short
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He commented: “Synergi are supplying a beneficial, cost effective solution using the latest technology to transform our processes, meeting our current and future business needs. “Our investment will not only provide long term efficiency savings but ensure staff have the latest IT tools and resources to hand to work quicker and smarter as the business develops.” Justin Short, who is Director at the Tyneside technology company, believes the partnership with Northumbrian Water underlines Synergi’s reputation in the business process management market, which business analyst Gartner estimated to be worth $2.7bn globally. He added: “Nintex software is part of a growing sector and we are in the vanguard of utilising this and other Microsoft technologies to deliver high quality, seamless solutions to regional and national customers like Northumbrian Water. “We are seeing strong demand as more organisations look to migrate to these new technologies, which quickly deliver demonstrable benefits and ROI.”
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Apps and Gadgets
5 Applications worth trying We all love a good Mobile App, and there’s literally thousands of them on the app store of your choice. But which ones are worth downloading and hogging your system resources with? Team Valley Web’s Colin Harris takes a look at this month’s selection.
Feedly The joy of this app is that instead of visiting lots of different websites to see if there are any new content, you can use just one application to do that. What a great timesaver - using a relatively old piece of technology called RSS. RSS feeds are small text files that are generated by websites - mainly news, blogs and other dynamic sites. Your site may generate a RSS feed without you knowing - it’s not something that many sites publicise. But what’s good about them? Every time new content is published on a website, RSS feeds update with a summary of the change the title, a snippet and the time it was updated. Now this is where Feedly comes in, it is an aggregator - it is an app which sniffs out and loads RSS feeds from sources you add and constantly polls them for updates.
Whoscall Fed up of receiving spam calls on your mobile? Whoscall is a great real-time app which monitors your incoming calls. For numbers not on your contact list it quickly looks up the number from its database to see if the number has been reported as spam and why - for example it categorises a number as Spam, PPI, Nuisance Calls and other categories. You can then disconnect and add the number to your block list so they will not hassle you any more.
Podcast Addict
WordPress Mobile App As a member of Team Valley Web I had to include an App involving website development. Most of our websites are based on the WordPress development framework, and traditionally clients can update their sites using a computer via their web browser. WordPress have published a mobile phone application which allows users to quickly add posts, pages and manage website content. It’s very lightweight but powerful and a must for all our clients who enjoy updating their website on a regular basis.
Another aggregator is Podcast Addict. It enables users to load up a list of their favourite podcasts and present them in a user-friendly way for on-the-go listening. What makes this app special is the number of great features it has. It auto deletes listened-to podcasts, options to download on Wi-Fi only, uses multiple search engines when looking for new pods and has an audio enhancer and speed controls for speech-based casts.
Waze Why buy expensive Sat Navs which are always out of date, wrong and misleading? You can have the power of a fully updated, intelligent satellite navigation system on a device you already have - your mobile phone. Waze is a full Sat Nav application with everything you’d expect - route planning, world-wide maps, changeable voices, but it is also a user contributed project.
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A renticeshi s /NVQ’s wit Access Training Access Training is an award winning provider based in the state-of-the-art, Skills Academy on the Team Valley. We have been delivering training programmes for businesses and individuals across the North East for over 30 years. We have a genuine interest in the success of the companies we work with and aim to provide a personal, bespoke service tailoring the NVQ / Apprenticeship to the employers’ needs. We are currently working with a number of Team Valley based employers including: Express Engineering, Elring Parts, H2o Bathroom Design Co, It’s All Good Ltd and Amari Plastics.
OUR OFFER We provide companies with quality apprentices that make a real difference to their business. We take pride in ensuring we recruit the right person for the job and we support you every step of the way to employing a fully qualified, reliable employee. We can also help to up-skill your existing employees and can deliver a range of programmes to help develop the skills of your team.
whAt ARE thE bEnEFits? While gaining qualifications is highly desirable, the most important aspect about good training is whether it has an impact on the individual and your business. Here are some of the benefits that our employers have told us about: • Increased productivity • Improved levels of quality • Growth of the business • Apprentices bring enthusiasm and new ideas into the business
EmplOyER tEstimOniAl “We recently used Access Training to recruit an administration apprentice and they provided an excellent choice of candidates, we were so pleased with the service that we are currently recruiting a second Apprentice with them” Kate Brown Office Manager at Fresh Freight Ltd.
gEtting in tOUch If you would like to offer training programmes to any of your current staff or would like to recruit an Apprentice please contact our Business Solutions team: T / 0191 490 4646 E / info@accesstraining.org
AppREnticEships And nVQ’s ARE AVAilAblE in thE FOllOwing AREAs: • Accounting (AAT) • Business Administration • Customer Service • IT User • Social Media & Digital Marketing • Team Leading & Management Access training Gateshead Skills Academy, Kingsway South, Team Valley Gateshead, NE11 0JL T / 0191 490 4646 E / info@accesstraining.org
• Hairdressing • Beauty Therapy • Barbering • Manufacturing • Warehousing & Storage • Installing Security Systems
Mile House, Bridge End, Chester le Street, County Durham, DH3 3RA T / 0191 388 4488 E / info@accesstraining.org
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