Member News

SimRush uses next generation access technology and LTE connectivity to deliver superfast broadband to premises with little or no existing capability. It is taking businesses which are in broadband not-spots by storm and transforming the way they can do business.

After its initial research and development phase the product underwent a vigorous testing phase for 12 months ensuring it was ready for general wide-scale UK release in Q4 of 2016.  Norfolk based internet communications provider FreeClix was appointed as Lead Technology Partner in September 2016 and it was fitting that a product researched and developed in Norfolk was given its first public exhibition at a Norfolk event.

The Norfolk Chamber of Commerce MPs Event 2017 was the perfect launchpad given the ‘Revolution in Technology’ and ‘Changing Landscape and Infrastructure’ topics under debate. The product received enthusiastic interest from delegates and MPs who clearly demonstrated they were all keen to ensure Norfolk businesses are not left behind by poor broadband infrastructure.

The FreeClix stand featured this fun video below which explained the benefits of the product to visitors.

SimRush is the perfect product for both Norfolk and UK-wide business (and home) users who are sick of waiting around to be fibre enabled, cannot get wireless as they are obscured by trees, because local fixed access wireless providers do not have enough customers to make installations viable, or they simply don’t want satellite due to its high latency and cost.

SimRush hardware can be used ‘out of the box’ and can be up and running in a matter of minutes. The cloud managed devices are automatically kept up to date can be managed locally by end users via the customer portal. To enable users to meet their specific needs in more complex network environments, the equipment can be configured to meet customers’ bespoke requirements and can be deployed into premises as part of a wider connectivity solution.

Businesses which now have the superfast service they need have found it has not just allowed them to conduct ordinary business, its enabled them to compete and grow. This case study gives a brilliant example of how a rural business has literally transformed the way it’s now doing business thanks to a SimRush install by FreeClix.

SimRush can be purchased across the UK from authorised technical resellers. Pricing is dependent on data requirement please contact us for details of your nearest authorised technical reseller who can provide you with advice and pricing.

www.simrush.com

Connect Plus Services are responsible for the maintenance and operations of the M25 motorway network, including all adjoining trunk and slip roads, and their website reads: “Imagine a world where you were never late; where there were no traffic jams, queues or accidents; where you travelled with ease and were spared thoughts of frustration and annoyance”. 

Aiming to practice what they preach and lead by example, CPS launched a Liftshare scheme for their workforce at the beginning of 2017. With seven main sites of staff, and varying shift patterns, the business needed a flexible sharing policy that would suit all.

Frequently working on large projects outside and in all elements, CPS are no stranger to environmental concerns and corporate social responsibility. With ambitious carbon reduction targets to hit by 2020, CPS need to find new ways to reduce their impact on the environment.

Taking the step to implement priority parking bays for car sharers at three sites, CPS launched their scheme and invited the Liftshare Team on site to meet with staff. Completing floor walks of Dartford and South Mimms and signing people up for the free-to-use initiative at their desks, 25% of the workforce signed up over just two days – an unprecedented amount of engagement!

CPS used their social media, company-wide briefings and email to talk about car sharing and its benefits to their staff, and incentivised with a prize draw for those signing up. This all-round approach has been extremely successful, and the interest received is tantamount to the management buy-in.

Rebecca Gysin, Liftshare Scheme Manager, said: “As a business we take our impact on the environment very seriously, it is one of our six business priorities and goals. Seeing that our work focuses on improving journeys on the M25, we felt it was important to demonstrate our commitment to improving congestion on our roads.  During the process of deciding whether Liftshare was right for our business we identified that over 43% of our staff lived within one mile of a colleague travelling to the same site, this evidence showed us that this would be a worthwhile investment and really give our staff an opportunity to save themselves some money of their fuels bills and maybe also make some new friends along the way. “

If you’d like more information on introducing a Liftshare scheme for your business, or think personalised travel planning or car sharing could work for your organisation, get in touch with the Liftshare Business Team.

RenEnergy has started construction of a 1.9MW solar Photo Voltaic (PV) plant at the Briar Chemicals site in Norwich, UK. The PV array will provide low carbon energy into the Briar Chemicals facility. The development will be built on a site adjacent to the plant, utilising otherwise undeveloped land to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of 400 houses, and offset 860 tonnes of CO2 annually.

The solar array will be installed at no capital cost to Briar Chemicals; rather it will be owned and maintained by RenEnergy and its partners, selling the energy produced to the site at a discount to the market rate. Over the 25-year life of the project, the discount will amount to significant operational savings, helping Briar Chemicals remain competitive and sustainable in a global market, whilst complimenting the operation of the existing Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant.

Tim Green, Executive Director and Site Manager said: “This is an exciting project; it will allow us to use power generated from the sun and use it within our manufacturing processes. This will enable us to focus on production of cost-effective high quality chemicals, knowing that we are doing so in an extremely environmentally friendly way.”

Damian Baker, MD of RenEnergy said: “We have been working with Briar for over nine months to deliver this project. The system had to be designed to ensure it met the high standards demanded in this engineering sector and is a real testament to all involved.”

The installation will consist of 6,508 Solar World PV panels connected to 84 Fronius inverters. The ground frame used to mount the panels was designed and manufactured by Hi-Span in Wymondham, part of RenEnergy’s policy to use local suppliers whenever possible.

Designed in order for peak generation to coincide with Briar’s peak energy load, the solar plant will produce approximately 1,800,000 kWh of energy a year, of which over 70% will be consumed on site, with the surplus being exported for use elsewhere on the electricity grid.

In addition to the generation of low carbon energy, the ground array will enhance the biodiversity of the area, providing shelter and habitat to a wide variety of insects, animals and wildflowers, further adding to the green credentials of the project.

Briar Chemicals deliver chemical synthesis, formulation, packing and shipping services to customers across the globe. From their site in Norwich, they service world-leading companies in the crop protection, fine and speciality sectors, utilising a broad asset and technology base, underpinned by quality driven project management and operational excellence.

Businesses, homeowners or communities wishing to know more about the local generation of renewable energy can visit www.renenergy.co.uk to find out more.

BBA Digital Media got heart through out January and February, this time for none other than 

Just another fab example of focussed advertising: have you considered joining our network of digital screens to push a specific element of your business?

Almost five decades have passed since equal pay legislation was introduced and yet some women still earn less than men for doing the same work. The current UK gender pay gap stands at just over 18%. 

With a view to eliminating the gender pay gap in a generation, later this year the government will be introducing new regulations requiring large employers, including the public sector, to publish their gender pay gap and gender bonus gap. 

The gender pay gap looks at average pay differences between men and women across an entire organisation, in contrast to equal pay which focuses on the differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value.

It is expected that greater transparency around the gender pay gap will enable employers to identify new opportunities to increase female participation in their workforce, as well as increasing employee confidence in the remuneration process.  The evidence provided by gender pay gap reporting will also be used by the government to look at whether other initiatives are required to narrow the gender pay gap. 

The regulations will apply to all private and voluntary sector employers with at least 250 ‘relevant’ employees.  

Large employers will be required on an annual basis to publicise details of the rates at which they pay female employees compared with male employees including:

• the difference between the mean and median hourly rates of pay between male and female full pay employees;
• the difference between men and women’s mean and median bonus pay over a 12-month period;
• the number of men and women in each of four groups based on the organisation’s overall pay range; and
• the proportion of males and females who have received bonuses.

Organisations will have up to 12 months from April 2017 to publish this information and should be making their payroll aware about these reporting obligations.  

Although only large businesses will be expected to highlight their gender pay gap next year, given the likely increase in media interest and employee awareness following the publication of the first reports, employers of any size could face a surge of challenges by staff regarding perceived pay differences in workplace.  Equal pay claims are often complex and expensive to defend, with substantial amounts at stake. 

All employers should consider taking steps now to identify whether potential gender pay disparity exists within their organisation.  Unfortunately there are no easy solutions for employers if such pay disparity is identified, but simply ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away is unlikely to be an option in the future.

Nicola Butterworth and Graham Irons will be discussing the law surrounding equal pay issues and the reporting requirements, including defences to equal pay claims and handling an equal pay grievance at the next Norfolk Chamber of Commerce HR forum on 22 March 2017.  The session will also look at future legal reforms and recent case law decisions and identify how these developments will impact on local businesses.

 To book a place please visit the event page

MEDIA RELEASE 22 February, 2017 Norwich Airport posts 10% passenger increase Norwich Airport is celebrating a 10% increase in passenger numbers, passing the half a million mark for the first time since 2008. Figures just released by the CAA show that Norwich handled 506,007 passengers in 2016, up 43,343 on the year before, an increase of 10%.

The growth is being attributed to the launch of several new routes in 2016 including the return of year-round sunshine flights to Malaga and Alicante last Easter, the first in almost 10 years. The flights were made possible by an innovative partnership between Exeter-based airline Flybe and Regional & City Airports (RCA), the airport management division of Rigby Group PLC, which owns Norwich Airport and Exeter Airport. This saw the introduction of one of Flybe’s E195 118-seater jet aircraft on the routes, which operate year-round.

The addition of winter ski flights to Chambery, a year-round service to Exeter and holiday flights to Gran Canaria and Cyprus have also played their part. Norwich Airport managing director Richard Pace said: “We’ve had a great year and every month saw passenger growth of between 4% and 19%. “The return of the Spanish sunshine flights has been a huge success with double digit increases in March, April and May. July and November were among our best ever, both up by 19%, and Chambery has proved popular helping us to end the year 9% up in December and 10% overall.” Richard said that he was hopeful of continued growth in 2017 with the launch of a new weekly service to the Greek Island of Rhodes, increased flights to Jersey, and special flights to Dubrovnik in Croatia and Venice in Italy.

He added: “Growing our route network to include more international hubs and leisure destinations remains our priority, and the completion of the Northern Distributor Road next year will make it even easier for people to travel from their local airport.” For more information about scheduled and holiday flights from Norwich Airport please visit www.norwichairport.co.uk 

Richard Chatten QFP, International Support Officer at TaxAssist Accountants will be sharing his experience of providing support to a global network of franchisees, as a guest speaker at the International Franchising Symposium on 16th-17th March.

Hosted by The British & International Franchise Associations with the European Franchise Federation, the event will be held at the prestigious Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, London.

With almost a decade of experience in the international franchise industry, Richard will talk about the challenges of supporting franchisees around the world and explain how TaxAssist Accountants successfully overcame them to continue growing its network in Australia and the Republic of Ireland.

Richard said: “As well as having to understand the different tax legislations and business cultures, international markets require comprehensive and dedicated support to grow a network of successful franchisees.

“I am looking forward to sharing this experience when I take part in the Interactive Q&A Panel on 17th March.”

The Symposium will showcase speakers from the USA, Europe and the UK and there will be discussions on topics from the future of digital marketing, to the nuts and bolts of different markets, worldwide trends in regulation and challenges facing franchising in the future.

In the UK, 38% of home-grown franchisors now expand internationally and TaxAssist Accountants is one of them, with franchise operations in the Republic of Ireland and Australia with further expansion planned to Canada and the USA.

Among those joining Richard as guest speakers at the event will be Aziz Hashim, International Franchise Association Immediate Past Chair, Managing Partner, NRD Capital, LLC who will be talking about Franchising, Leadership and Global Growth. Gavin Hewitt, BBC News Chief Correspondent, will be providing the after-dinner speeches at the Gala Dinner.

To find out more about International Franchise Week and to book your place, visit www.thebfa.org/InternationalFranchising

February 2017

We are pleased to be working on an exciting project with Pelican Rouge Coffee Solutions (https://www.pelicanrouge.co.uk/) on their online profile and search engine optimisation (SEO) presence. Pelican Rouge is a very established brand in the UK and around the world. Established in Antwerp, Belgium in 1863, they have more than 150 years of experience in efficiently providing a multitude of clients with high quality coffee around the year.

As part of our ongoing work with Pelican Rouge we have had to make a number of assessments to their site’s workings and we are working on a number of further updates and improvements.

Pelican Rouge as a brand have websites for their presence in a few countries and around the world. Therefore, one of our initial actions has been to carry out a comprehensive audit of the existing UK Pelican Rouge website. This included analysing all of their website traffic, their target keywords, how their site is crawled by Google and what improvements can be made to their site to benefit their online presence and boost their performance on search engines.

In addition, we also carried out a detailed audit and analysis of some of Pelican Rouge’s main competitors to identify new channels we may pursue through SEO; specifically for the vending and coffee industries. Having carried out the audit and website analyses, we have been moving towards a comprehensive and detailed online strategy for Pelican Rouge.

With regards to the SEO we have been working to provide new meta data for their website, ensuring that each and every page has its own unique meta data, complying with SEO best practices and avoiding duplication. The site has hundreds of pages, providing great scope for opportunities on this front.

We have also been working continuously to ensure that the website is efficiently and properly crawled and ranked by Google. These changes have already yielded very positive results, with Pelican Rouge now being found on the first page of Google for a few key industry terms.

As well as ensuring the site gets ranked properly by search engines through meta data updates we are constantly monitoring the link profile and all inbound and outbound links for Pelican Rouge. We have also been working on acquiring high quality and industry related links for Pelican Rouge to build up their link profile and we are working towards a thorough on and off-site content strategy to increase the offering and resourcefulness of their website.

We will be continuing to work with Pelican Rouge through 2017 and look forward to continuing with the already exciting progress.

If you are considering an office refurbishment, aside from the design style and quality of workmanship, there are many things to consider when choosing an office design company.

As a business owner, you will know the importance of health and safety in the workplace and how difficult it can sometimes be to abide to the regulations put in place.

With that in mind, Bluespace are pleased to report that we have received a much sought after accreditation from the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS).

What is CHAS Accreditation?

In a nutshell, CHAS helps both buyers and suppliers in the assessment of health and safety competence. This accreditation helps you with the often lengthy process of assessing a contractor’s health and safety standard and work practice. In order to receive the accreditation, CHAS have already carried out any assessments required and the award confirms that the company in question is performing to the best H&S standards and following up to date policies.

Continued dedication to Health and Safety

We are delighted to have reached the high standards that CHAS have in place, with regards to our health and safety policy statement and our organisation’s health and safety arrangements.

Bluespace are dedicated to ongoing health and safety training of our staff and continual updating of our policies, leaving you safe in the knowledge that when you trust your business to us for an office refurbishment or fit out, we have health and safety covered.  

Specialist premium party food manufacturer Frank Dale Foods Limited has called a creditors’ meeting for 28 February 2017 to appoint a liquidator.  Norwich based business rescue and insolvency specialists McTear Williams & Wood is acting on behalf of the Company.

The Company employs 57 staff at its factory in Bunwell, South Norfolk whose jobs are now at risk.

Established in 1994 the Company traded successfully for many years but experienced a downturn in 2016 caused by production difficulties servicing sales after a period of significant growth. The resulting trading losses put strain on cash flow and efforts to refinance proved unsuccessful.

Frank Dale Foods Limited is best known as an upmarket manufacturer of savoury and dessert canapes, quiches and tartlets. It has won a number of national awards and in 2012 provided products for Her Majesty the Queen’s Jubilee.

Nigel Cushion, Chairman of the Company, said “sadly time has run out for the Company but we are hopeful that a buyer can be found for the business and assets so jobs can be saved and that is the Board’s main focus now”.

The Company will continue to trade up to liquidation in the hope that a buyer can be found for the business and assets as a going concern. Andrew McTear said ‘We are working with the board of directors to market the business and assets for sale and have already received serious interest. Anyone interested in buying the business should contact us immediately on 01603 877540’.

We at Tudor Lodge Consultants have recently started working on an exciting project with Medicareplus International (medicareplus.co.uk), a UK based manufacturer of a range of medical devices and products. Based in the heart of North West London, Medicareplus have over the years grown and now supply a range of companies and healthcare trusts with many devices and healthcare products including peak flow meters, gauze products, dressings and more.

Their website is a WordPress e-commerce site with a number of sections and various bespoke features. The problem faced by Medicareplus has been the difficulty in getting found for relevant terms as well as the explicitly product-related terms they are found for. With products falling under various categories each and with there being such a wide array of products and devices, there has been no shortage of opportunities to improve things online.

Ensuring that the content management system (CMS) used by Medicareplus is updated for SEO, with all security and ranking updates made was an initial priority. This was completed to make sure that all subsequent work’s effects are truly maximised.

We have worked to ensure that their site is properly crawled by Google and the content read appropriately. This has been done through various clean search engine optimisation (SEO) practices. We started the project by ensuring that all broken links on their site were fixed. These broken links effectively lead Google’s ‘spiders’ that crawl and rank sites to dead ends which have been holding back the site’s performance.

We have also ensured that all of the meta data on the site is fully optimised, with no duplications and no omissions across the entire site (which has over 150 pages; many of which are products.) We have maintained SEO best practices for all of the meta data and with feedback from Medicareplus International have made sure that the keywords and search terms targeted are completely relevant to their aims, goals and prospective customers alike.

We have started embarking on an exciting and resourceful content strategy with Medicareplus and this is sure to see their rankings on search engines increase further. We are looking to building on this budding relationship over the coming months.

Norwich data centre firm MIGSOLV joins PSTG to offer full tech package to local businesses

Norwich-based data centre operator MIGSOLV – a Norfolk Chamber Gold Patron – has struck a partnership with IT company PSTG to offer a full packaged technology service to local businesses. This includes data centre ‘colocation’, IT system design, computer hardware and support.

MIGSOLV provides IT colocation services from its ultra-secure Gatehouse facility in Norwich – the only major data centre in the Norfolk/Suffolk area. The company provides flexible rack space for public bodies and companies across all sectors securely to site their IT systems. It also provides a service to help customers move into The Gatehouse and comprehensive, round-the-clock support.

Professional Services Technology Group (PSTG) is a provider of computer hardware which provides a comprehensive set of associated services from initial systems design through to support. It operates across many sectors – with particular expertise in health, finance and hospitality – working with vendors including HP, EMC, IBM, Cisco, Dell and Microsoft.

The new partnership enables PSTG to offer its customers a highly secure data centre in the East of England, while it enables MIGSOLV to offer hardware and associated consultancy services. It also enables the two companies to bid jointly for requirements for a full packaged service.

David Manning, Managing Director of MIGSOLV, explains: “The partnership makes great business sense for us, PSTG and our collective customers. We’re now able to call on PSTG’s expertise in computer hardware and related services for clients who want the convenience of an integrated package. We’ve already had customers ask if we can provide a service of this kind. Our relationship with PSTG now makes this possible.”

Colin Woods, Business Development Manager at PSTG, comments: “We need to be able to offer our customers the best data centre services on the market. Our strategy is to team up with independent operators rather than the big players, as we believe that will give our customers better flexibility, value and customer care. MIGSOLV fits the bill perfectly. We’re extremely impressed by the professionalism and security of its Norwich data centre, and I know we’ll work well together to deliver what our customers need.”

For more on MIGSOLV, people should visit www.migsolv.com, call 020 3600 1000 or email enquiries@migsolv.com. For more on PSTG, they should visit https://pstg.co.uk or call 0208 303 7622. 

For more media information & images, please contact:

Tariq Khwaja from TK Associates on:

tariq.khwaja@tk-associates.com

01932 224 212