So this is Christmas…….

……and what have you done, as the song says.  Well, here in Zipporah we have been reflecting on the year behind us as 2011 enters its twilight.  The answer to the question was “quite a lot actually”.  There have been a few bumps and scrapes and a lot of sweat and tears along the way but we emerge toward 2012 with a new impetus and the strongest team Zipporah has known.  I’m very proud of what Zipporah has achieved in 2011 and of the people who have worked to achieve it. I know it has had its share of trials and issues as we have pushed to realise our goal but in the last few months every difficulty has been overcome and we have emerged with a structure and organisation with all the growth potential to continue our success in the UK and fully build on early successes in other countries.  So to answer the question in more depth.  This is what we have done.

• Restructured the organisation to create a delivery and test team which will give the focus and hands on management to delivery, freeing up the directors
• Adjusted the directors client facing role to work strategically with our clients to work out requirements with them and the future direction whilst also being a point of clarity and escalation
• Increased the size of the technical team to deliver more work
• Completed work on several of the “neo” projects.  Introducing a new architecture for ease of use by the Zipporah team and a whole host of new features for our clients.
• Started roll-out of the neo modules for several clients
• Built and rolled out a new scheduling system, which is now already being utilised to start delivering capability for Powys County Council housing repair service.
• Rolled out our leisure management system across a multi-site authority
• Won and implemented a contract with the Republic of Ireland to deliver a cross country system
• Won a contract with a Sydney (Australia) based council to deliver a corporate solution for their online bookings.  Starting early 2012 and the first of many to come.
• Our sales team continued to increase our market share for online systems taking on a further 11 new clients.
• Emma Powell (our director) also managed to find time to give birth to a beautiful baby girl, Grace Elizabeth Powell.

These are just a few of the achievements of the year.  There are so many others both personal and as a team that I could make this blog very long indeed.  I’ve always said Zipporah is like a family and these achievements are only made possible by the way that our teams pull together.  So many of our team often go that extra mile for us and our clients and will always deliver when time comes.  We couldn’t achieve anything without this team work.

So as the year comes to a close I wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our existing customers,  the customers we have yet to meet and to our team who have worked so hard to make 2011 a success.

How much will really change in 2012 for the UK public sector tech market?

Analyst firm TechMarketView has published its annual predictions for the UK public sector:

Government ICT strategy will languish as new CIO team boards

When the new CIO in place, the new Cabinet Office team will face an enormous task with a myriad risks threatening to hamper the implementation of the UK Government ICT strategy

A peak in renewals will result in radical contract restructuring

In 2012 we will see a peak in the number of contracts coming to their natural conclusion. Contracts will be radically restructured on renewal as UK Government moves from a vertically-siloed model to a horizontal model.

Megaplayers will retain lion’s share of major contract renewals

In times of austerity, and a propensity for low-risk options organisations are expected to stick to the suppliers they know  -  which will likely be industry leading suppliers.

Shared services will really take off

2012 and 2013 will be remembered in the UK public sector as the period when shared services really took off. Procurement and G cloud platforms will give departments and agencies more flexibility to buy from shared services centres in the future. The competition is expected to be intense.

SMEs will establish beachhead in government shared services

SMEs will have more opportunities as contracts are broken down, particularly where niche requirements are separated out and procured separately. The most successful suppliers will be those that focus on being best of breed in one or a handful of niche service lines that can be shared horizontally across multiple organisations.

G-Cloud will be patchy and slow-moving

New shared services organisations will give cloud adoption a push in the right direction. But shared services ventures aside, adoption of cloud services will be very slow to take off. The letting of the short 6-9 month G-Cloud framework (due early next year) indicates to us that most cloud adoption will be happening on low-risk smaller projects as UK Government dips its toe in the water to see what works and what doesn’t.

Mega players will further penetrate local government markets

The central government market is tough. Sectors like police (internal to external shift in spend), education (higher education in particular), and health (renewed interest due to localism agenda) are attracting increasing interest from the traditionally central government-focused suppliers. Many are investing in sector specific solutions and will be keen to see a return.

£75m boost for 'tech innovative' SMEs

Following the government's recent Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth which has allocated millions of pounds across technology fields, the UK government has also announced a £75 funding to technology and innovative SMEs in a bid to boost innovation and research in the UK, whilst attempting to spur companies to grow.

The announcements set out the government's plans to boost economic growth through investment in SMEs.

The allocated £75m for the Technology Strategy Board is hoped to ensure high tech innovative SMEs have access to the facilities and finance they need to develop and commercialise their products.The strategy, launched by Business Secretary Vince Cable and science minister David Willetts

Vince Cable, business secretary who launched the strategy, believes that by improving incentives companies would be encouraged to create life changing products.

David Willetts, science minister,  said the new innovation and research strategy was the next step in ensuring that the UK provided the best possible environment for entrepreneurs and innovators.

The Government Digital Service

The Government Digital Service (GDS) – government’s new site for online public services -  has been officially launched. The site, led by former Guardian digital man Mike Bracken, is set to transform the way citizens interact with government.

GDS has been establishing itself since early August with the support of the Cabinet Office, Downing Street and HM Treasury. It has already worked in a number of areas including the development of the government's e-petitions website.

The new home for online public services has gone live on the 8^th December and the government's executive director of digital -  Mike Bracken -  believes this will be a key factor in supporting a new generation of digital public services.

Mr. Maude, Cabinet Office minister, said the Government has set up GDS in order to offer world class digital products that meet people's needs and offer better value for taxpayers' money

He also added that GDS, as the centre for digital government in the UK, will transform the way people access government information by using digital technology to deliver services that put the user first and give them the smartest and most cost-effective service possible.

However, there are still concerns regarding the public sector’s slow pace towards digital implementation when compared to the private sector.  In response to these concerns, Bracken assured that GDS would adopt a "faster pace for delivery" during 2012.

Councils and digital communications

Although digital communication on numerous platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is widespread amongst citizens, come councils seem to struggle to identify and thus to implement a successful digital strategy.

But these innovations enable quicker and more engaging interactions between citizens and the council.

The recently published Public Sector Digital Communications and Social Media survey that benchmarks public sector organisations’ understanding and current trends in digital communication and social media revealed invaluable findings on how public organisations are facing the digital driven society

Social Media

Social Media should be seen as one channel in a communications strategy that covers other digital channels like websites, SEO and mobile content delivery as well as offline tools. The engaging character of social media is seen as an effective way to engage in two-way dialogue in a citizen’s own space and at their convenience. Although quick and instant, councils seem to find managing the resource overhead more problematic. This may explain why most of those surveyed only reported using a few social media channels, although worryingly only 30% reported having social media in their communications strategy.

There is little point in pursuing a weak and unplanned social media activity. Like all activity within an organisation, social media objectives need to be set, a target audience identified and the necessary resources and budget secured.

Most public sector bodies are in fact embracing some social media activity, with social networking (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) having the highest usage at 71% followed by microblogging (e.g. Twitter) with 69% usage. However, only 43% report that they are monitoring the effectiveness of social media engagement. How do the majority, not measuring their social media activity, know if it is meeting its objectives? Social media monitoring may be difficult but it is vital, and there are a range of solutions and training courses on the market to help with this.

Monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of the digital strategy will help councils understanding how users engage with their websites in order to improve customer journeys. High website traffic doesn’t necessarily mean an effective strategy: if citizens are dropping out before completing the tasks and reverting to phone contact then this can be seen as an expensive failure. These failures need to be identified so that they can be remedied. This can only be done with robust analytics and the skills to interpret them.  Above all, having metrics can help prove the success and justify digital marketing.

Creating efficiencies - do it online

It is important to recognise the channel costs of servicing citizens. Other surveys, such as SOCITM’s channel benchmarking survey, have indicated that channel costs are:

•    £8.23 Face-to-face
•    £3.21 Telephone
•    £0.39 Website

Clearly by directing people to self-serve online and ensuring that processes are as easy as possible, can create significant savings for a council receiving hundreds or thousands of contacts every day. These figures can be viewed for those light-touch services such as paying a bill, finding some information like a recycling collection day or submitting an application. For service provision where in-depth human interaction is required, beatbullying published at the Third Sector Digital Communication and Social Media convention provide the costs for 1-2-1 interventions:

•    £600 Face-to-face
•    £250 Telephone
•    £60 Online

Whilst the costs are much higher, there are clear similarities in the savings that can be made. Zipporah has been involved in helping numerous councils, which recognise the efficiency gains that can be made online by improving their operations and services on a digital platform through efficient e-commerce and e-booking solutions. By doing this, website visitors will have a better experience while organisations reduce their costs and improve service delivery.

Delivering services online is the most efficient way of engaging with service users, as acknowledged by 68% of those surveyed by GOSS. Added to this, 76% said they were under pressure to reduce costs. There seems a clear route to resolving the requirement to reduce costs, increase online engagement and making efficiency savings - put a channel shift strategy and budget in place to facilitate the delivery of more services online.

More people online in the UK

A report from the Office for National Statistics recently published has revealed the digital divide in the UK has narrowed significantly during the third quarter of 2011.

In its latest quarterly Internet Access update the ONS said that although 8.43 million adults in the UK had still never used the internet, this figure had decreased by 299,000 since the previous quarterly report. This represents a major improvement on earlier rates of getting people online with only 12,000 adults joining the digital age between the first two quarterly updates of the year.

The largest decrease in non-users was amongst the 75 and over age group where there were said to be 164,000 fewer people on the wrong side of the digital divide.

As the digital divide in the UK narrows, Local authorities need to re-think and re-shape their services offer. These figures represent a plethora of opportunities to alternative ways of delivering services through online platforms which local authories must consider.

More changes announced to central government procurement

With the new Government Procurement Service up and running more changes to central government procurement were announced by Mr. Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Secretary. to as a major shake-up of central government procurement.

The plans aim to put over £50bn worth of public works and services tenders online and will thus facilitate and accelerate the process to bid for government work, especially for smaller companies who often lose out when pitching for public projects. Government departments will now be instructed to break contracts into bite-sized chunks to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to get involved.

Most of the work to go online initially will relate to IT and facilities management, with building and infrastructure projects going online from next April. According to the Cabinet Office Secretary, who is to ask Brussels to simplify EU rules on government procurement, the changes will mean it will be 40 per cent faster to do business with Whitehall.

According to Maude, UK public sector spends a huge amount of money in buying in goods and services from outside, and it is not doing it properly. The UK currently follows the European law extremely literally, which entails very legalistic processes, and with the big contracts councils have Mr. Maude believes the current situation is not particularly benefiting UK businesses.

Scotland committed to the digital future

The Scottish Government and different organisations across public, private, academic and third sectors have signed a digital participation charter to help bring together resources in order to secure Scotland's digital future.

The various organisations signing the charter, including Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, University of Edinburgh, Carnegie UK Trust, Scotland IS, have committed to sharing information and aligning their resources and efforts to deliver shared outcomes over the course of the current Parliament.

The Scottish Government believes digital technology is crucial to Scotland’s future economic growth, social and environmental success and it is fully committed towards it.

This document brings together the public, private, academic and third sectors to achieve the shared goal of increasing digital participation in Scotland as it has potential to bring many benefits to the nation.

In a near future, more organisations are expected to join the shared charter.

November at Zipporah

It’s November, the year has gone quickly and we are already one month into a new business year at Zipporah.  Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of the average week you forget to take stock of what’s going on and suddenly it has been months gone before you know it.  We are launching into our new business year full throttle with international and domestic campaigns ramping up, our new leisure management system getting rolled out to more users and the neo systems coming into full swing and some now live making it easier than ever for our clients to manage their systems.  It seems like only yesterday we were toasting Emma as she started her maternity leave and already the baby is almost three weeks old.  Time flies by around us as we work hard to better our services, systems and deliver benefits to our clients on an even higher scale than before. It’s good to be busy, it’s good to push the boundaries but just this once I thought I’d stop for a minute and talk about something else.

November is also a month with some particularly special activities in it.  Firstly we have Remembrance Day.  When I was young I seem to remember that at 11 o’clock the whole country fell silent as we remembered the brave men and women lost, and the people they left behind.  Now it seems that phones still ring and meetings still go on and people in all the hustle and bustle of a busy daily life forget what the chimes of 11 o’clock on November 11^th mean.  At Zipporah we still want to uphold such a tradition so please don’t be worried if you can’t reach us at 11 o’clock.  We haven’t stopped answering we are just taking a moment to reflect upon what sacrifice others have made for us.  As part of a young team I think it’s important to remember such things.

November also brings us “Movember”.  In order to raise awareness of the issues of prostate and testicular cancer men around the world decide to grow as outrageous a moustache as possible, put it on a website and try and raise money for charity.  This year a number of Zipporah staff have got together to create a team all of whom will deliver some exceptional facial topiary in the hope of gathering support, raise money and raise awareness.  I myself will be attempting something quite special.  I don’t write this to encourage your sponsorship (although it is for charity!) but instead to warn those people I will be meeting with over the next month.  It’s not some sort of breakdown at Zipporah that means several team members have gone feral.  It is one month only and then normal service will be resumed (until Christmas anyway!).

Zipporah first success via the Local Government Procurement Service

Zipporah is pleased to announce that we have been chosen by Hampshire County Council to provide a solution for its Registration Department, with a key function of the system being to handle the range of different appointment types through our easy to use Electronic Diary solution. The system will enable members of the public (online), HCC’s Contact Centre and Registration Services’ staff to book appointments for all Registration Services’ offices across the county.

When Hampshire County Council was looking to replace its current Registration Services’ Appointment Booking System with a new cloud hosted system, they underwent a Mini-Competition for the Supply of this solution through the very framework that Zipporah has successfully joined earlier in the year, the Local Government Software Application Solutions – Libraries, Museums and Leisure related Software Application.

We’re looking forward to working closely with the authority on this exciting project over the coming weeks and months, and ultimately helping the council achieve a more efficient service for both staff users and members of the public.

Hertfordshire County Council achieves substantial savings with the help of Zipporah

We were recently approached by Hertfordshire County Council to help develop their online service offerings in order to provide citizens and businesses with a faster and more efficient way to make requests of the authority.

Our ZIPI product seemed to fit the bill: a flexible and highly adaptable solution through which citizens could make requests for services, pay for requests where relevant and check on the status of their enquiries. Not only that but it also has the functionality to be further enhanced through its integration to a variety of third party systems, the authority’s back office financial systems through the simple transfer of data.

                                                             

Since implementing ZIPI, the authority has been extremely impressed with the outcomes it has helped them achieve – over the last 12 months. Hertfordshire has now achieved at least £79,000 in savings, with a total of 10,000 transactions taking place equating to revenues of £1.4 million being taken through the solution. Not only has the council gained these impressive savings, it has also made its services more accessible, and the process involved in handling these services far more efficient.

Communication is King

I’m a Blackberry user and I spend a lot of time out of the office, probably as much as I spend in the office.  So when the servers went down and we couldn’t get email or a number of other services it was a bit of a drama.  Ultimately as a business person I adapted and I found my way through the problem and nobody noticed that I was unreachable because I found other ways to get what I needed.  I can understand for others this wasn’t as easy.  The biggest thing that I noticed about the issue was the lack of information and clarity that could inform the customer.  When you have a crisis of that magnitude creating worldwide problems I can imagine it’s quite traumatic but with the levels of staffing available surely one of the first things to do was to get communication out there.  The more I think about the problems I see whether it’s with big business or with companies like Zipporah it’s communication that is key to managing all of these things.

Over the length of my career with Zipporah from the day it started until today (and probably until the day I finally give in to the ravages of old age, stress and a poor diet) there are always moments where we as the supplier and our clients may not see things the same way or a problem arises which unless caught early can become an issue and eventually a showstopper.   I’ve seen many of these everywhere I have worked even before we started with Zipporah but there has always been a very easy way to resolve the issue – a conversation.  This may be about understanding why the issues is there, understanding how the system overcomes the issue in a way the client didn’t realise, it could even be about finding a middle ground between what the off the shelf package is and what an individual requirement for a particular department is but ultimately it can all be resolved with decent communication.  Very little will move forward until both parties talk and too many problems arise based on assumption.

Sometimes it can just be a simple matter of keeping clients informed.  We, this week, have had some troubles with our servers and as a number of clients utilise our service we tried to ensure communication flowed constantly to provide relevant updates.  We thought this was important to ensure our clients didn’t feel that we weren’t making every effort to resolve the problem.  At the other end of the scale we have had several successes of late with the new processes we have put in place to fully specify all systems that we implement for clients recognising configuration and change up front to avoid confusion.  This has worked brilliantly with implementation times falling and entirely new systems going through UAT in very short timescales.  The upshot is that for many of our existing clients we will be bringing in a bit more paperwork for you I’m afraid, resulting in the need for you to agree and signoff things a lot more but this up front slightly longer process is proving to reduce time considerably at delivery and testing stage, which must be worth the effort.  So it’s not that now we are bigger we have decided to become less flexible it’s that now we are bigger we have become better at being more flexible, more responsive and ensuring you have absolute clarity on what you need us to deliver.

A “digital by default” Public Service

The government has recently launched plans to save £1.4bn from ICT spending and drive forward the internet as a means to deliver public services in the future.

Through the ICT Strategy Strategic Implementation Plan, the government expects to make savings over the next four years, helping to develop a "digital by default" public services policy, and thus improving the efficiency and quality of government departments' ICT and creating a more open and competitive marketplace.

Key Milestones:

-       50% of central government departments' new ICT spending moved to public cloud computing services by the end of 2015

-       The government also plans to publish a cloud computing strategy this month.

-       80% of the Public Services Network (PSN) compliant by March 2014

-       Set of development targets of a Government application store

With this new plan the Government shows its commitment to deliver a better service to citizens through government ICT projects.

Zipporah becomes a member of the FIA

We are pleased to announce that as of October 2011 Zipporah has become a registered member of the Fitness Industry Association. The FIA is the trade body which represents every reputable organisation in the health and fitness industry, from over 2800 operators in the public and private sectors including over 250 supplier organisations.

This exciting news comes just off the back of a successful implementation of Zipporah’s Leisure Management System at Powys County Council, and with a number of other authorities throughout the UK already showing substantial interest thanks to our excellent reputation in the public sector, this membership can only aid us in proving that the Zipporah Solution in the best option in the marketplace.

The time has finally come!  Today Emma Powell, Director of Zipporah and winner of the Best Business Leader 2011 at the Welsh Women Mean Business awards will be taking a temporary sabbatical from the organisation in order to embark on a new mission of madness (apparently keeping us in order isn’t enough).  Emma is off on maternity for a while or “preparing the future generation of Zipporah management” as I like to call it.

She’s not leaving and will still be keeping an eye on things and making sure that I manage all the things I am so terrible at doing (forgetting to bill you all is one of my cardinal sins!  Forgetting when wages are due would be the other!).  That being the case it will still be very strange that after 8 and a half years of working together almost every day to build the business Emma will have a bigger adventure to concentrate on and I will be at the centre of driving things forward.  I only hope I can show an ounce of the calm under pressure and business acumen that Emma has always shown whilst I have been cowering under the desk.

Not having children myself I have wondered why Emma would want to do such a thing and how she will cope and then it hit me.  The crying, the hysteria, cleaning up mess, controlling unruly behaviour, knowing when to show the steely determination in a battle of wills, showing you care, listening and empathising.  All these key parenting skills are part of Emma’s everyday life already.  She does it for the staff and for the customers all the time and when you see how well she does it you realise what a fine parent she will make.

So this is a message to congratulate Emma and wish her all the very best for the months ahead.  We’ll try to keep the place clean and tidy and ensure everyone stays happy.  We look forward to our new team addition and I’ll get a playpen set up in the office for when you come back – you know you won’t be able to leave us for long.

Good luck mum!

Zipporah's new project with Kirklees Council

We’re pleased to announce that Zipporah has been chosen by Kirklees Council to provide a solution for its Registration Department, with a key function of the system being to handle the range of different appointment types through our easy to use Electronic Diary solution. We’re looking forward to working closely with the authority on this exciting project over the coming weeks and months, and ultimately helping the council achieve a more efficient service for both staff users and members of the public.

Our proven track record in providing solutions within the Public Sector was described as a main factor for us winning the contract and with Zipporah now boasting well over 50 local authority clients, this latest win only cements our position as the market leader in providing online business solutions to councils throughout the UK.

SOCITM new advice released for council websites

Socitm Insight announces important changes in the way in which council websites will be assessed for the Better connected 2012 report. Given that we provide solutions to provide local authorities with a set of tools to better connect with its public, I was very interested to read recently about these new changes.

The changes are to reflect the way in which Socitm Insight believes that council websites should be evolving to meet the needs of their existing online customers and encourage more people to shift to the web channel. Socitm have decided for the first time to announce the survey topics in advance,  as they believe it is important that councils implement top tasks as quickly as possible in order to achieve the financial savings from a programme of channel shift.

Task 1 Apply for a council job

Task 2 Comment on a planning application

Task 3 Find winter gritting routes  

Task 4 Find rubbish collection day

Task 5 Pay a parking fine

Task 6 Pay council tax

Task 7 Renew a library book 

Task 8 Find out about getting help at home

Task 9 Find out school term dates  

Task 10 Find opening times for local swimming pool

Task 11 Find records office opening hours 

I can’t help but feel that by providing criteria in advance it’s a bit like providing the questions to an exam well in advance of the actual test, so would it not be more productive to merely suggest that a view would be taken over all aspects of the services that councils should be providing via the web?

After looking at the list of tasks that SOCITM have provided, I think its fair to say that their ideas on how council websites should operate is a relatively narrow one, especially when you take into consideration the large range of services that local authorities currently could, or perhaps should, be providing to the public. With these current tasks local authorities are working towards, instead of providing an improved site in all areas, the focus will be targeted on the tasks that will score points rather than potentially provide the biggest benefits.

Zipporah awarded new Framework Agreement by Government Procurement Service

Zipporah is pleased to announce that after an extensive tender process we were successful in joining the Government Procurement Service Framework agreement for Libraries, Museums and Leisure related Software Application Solutions.

Through this new framework agreement, Zipporah can supply application software, including standard packages or bespoke solutions on a licensed, rental or subscription basis, as well as providing any goods or services which are necessary for the implementation, delivery and operation of this application software. This includes everything from consultancy and business change, design and system build, integrations, training, support and hosting in the following area:

Lot 5: Social Care & Education – Libraries, Museums and Leisure

Zipporah specifically targeted this agreement because of its perfect match with the solutions we currently provide to all of these public sector business areas.

Benefits of Government Procurement Service framework agreements;The Government Procurement Service frameworks provide multiple benefits for the public sector organisations who procure services from suppliers on the agreements:
· An efficient, fully EU-compliant route to market
· A standard, pre-agreed call-off contract structure and terms and conditions
· Expert advice and guidance on using the framework agreement
· Provision of management information
· Benchmarking activity to ensure continued value for money
· Supplier management and audit
· Shared information on best practice.

About Government Procurement Service;Government Procurement Service, an executive agency of the Cabinet Office, is the delivery arm of Government Procurement. It’s overall priority is to provide procurement savings for all organisations across the UK public sector, ranging from central government all the way through to the NHS, with a focus that delivers expert sourcing, category and centralised data management. Through the centralisation, standardisation and aggregation of spend on common goods and services they deliver significant, sustainable cost reductions to Government. The value for money, commercial procurement solutions are fully EU compliant covering energy, property and facilities management, office solutions, professional services, travel, fleet, IT commodities (including telecommunications and networks) and eCommerce.

Carry on Camping!

As you know we were selected by Milton Keynes Council to provide the local authority with a Corporate Solution for Room and Facilities bookings and management.  This is a core system which has some additional requirements for specialised modules for discrete business areas; one of these additional business areas is the Emberton Country Park Caravan site.

Zipporah is really pleased to be starting work on delivering the country park with a new booking system which will ultimately allow campers to select their pitch or caravan online. The new solution will provide the user with an easy to use graphical interface to be able to select from over 200 touring sites and 114 static pitches available at the park. The staff will also be able to book and manage customers' requirements in a much easier and timely fashion and in addition will have access to unprecedented up-to-date marketing and reporting information.

Emberton Country Park is Set in 200 acres of mature unspoilt parkland, where you can enjoy wildlife, lakeside walks, play areas and camping all in a family friendly setting...all of this has made me reconsider my plans for my own family holiday!

Continuing International Success

With the exciting news that Zipporah has won its first international client in Ireland, the team feel this is definitely the time to continue this success, and make a huge effort towards winning contracts in Australia.

As you probably already know, we have been speaking to a large number of authorities "Down Under" over the last few years, with some extremely positive initial demonstrations of our solutions taking place towards the end of last year. In the next few weeks we will be looking to re-engage with these contacts, as well as talking to the councils we haven’t contacted already with the view to going back out in the not too distant future, to secure some positive and substantial partnerships with Australian councils.

With some hard work, a lot of effort and plenty of late nights, we’re hoping it won’t be too long until we are celebrating more success for Zipporah overseas!

Local authority services...on the rise online?

We’ve recently heard in the news how England and Scotland have joined Wales and Northern Ireland in rolling out faster broadband to more and more rural areas, allowing citizens the access to a faster connection for browsing the internet and downloading information. With this in mind, surely local authorities have to be looking to offer more services through their websites?

We have already talked on numerous occasions about the benefits of an online system, reducing the amount of money it costs for councils to handle bookings for a whole a range of services. Handling less phone calls and face to face meetings and embracing more online activity, has the potential to save substantial amounts of money. It also gives citizens the opportunity to access these services 24/7, from the comfort of their own home and with councils paying a lot of attention to their standards of customer service, this can only be seen as a plus.

With all of these advantages in mind, and central government seemingly looking to provide more and more people in the UK a top rate internet connection, the time for local government to handle more and more services through their website is definitely now.

So does the best cost equate to best value?

Tenders are often a source of great reward but at the same time can result in an awful lot of time and effort being spent to produce nothing except disappointment and a thank you for your interest.

You can spend months meeting and understanding a clients needs and mirroring your solution to match these requirements, then procurement rules dictate that it must go to tender. So you provide the best fit, the best tender response but not necessarily the best price.

So then when you don’t win and everybody agrees that you were the best application but the rules around the award, which nearly always do, favour the best cost and not the best system, I start to question the point of a process that asks all these questions in the first place, that in the end is simply going to award the cheapest provider.

Zipporah's team & its new challenges

Hello again.  Yes, I’ve been away lately and other team members have been picking up my blogs valiantly trying to balance the poignancy of my writing with its laugh out loud comedy.  You’ve probably noticed as it lost that Oscar Wilde level of wit.  But I’m back now so you can rest easy.  It’s not that I have been on holiday or have been sitting with my feet up, oh no….it’s been the hard task of expanding the business as I described recently, bedding everything in, handing things over and generally getting us ready for the future.  So it is with some pride that I have seen the new team form and the development team pick up their new responsibilities with aplomb.  So let’s get you introduced.

Luke has joined us as a Business Analyst colleague and project manager as part of the delivery team.  Although young he quickly impressed with the range of skills he showed and has developed with a very interesting life story.  He’s from Atlanta Georgia so he can’t pronounce half the counties yet but we will give him time.  Alongside Luke we have Kathryn who has joined in the same position with a wealth of experience in this area, working with software development and running her own business.  It’s a very lucky find for us that just as we were looking for Kathryn she decided to return to project management.

In addition within the new delivery team we have Byron.  A tester with lots of experience of testing large applications in very complex areas (his last role involved testing software for underwriters and they have almost as many rules as a registrar!).  He’s also used to doing this in a small company and has already become an invaluable resource in testing the new software versions from a new perspective and delivering us a new process which we can implement to better catch any gaps.

Of course you know Will, Andrew, Evan, Dan, Tom and Mike from development and Jon and Jordan from sales but under our new structures you will get to know them even better as they get even more closely involved in development and client interaction.  Jordan will be picking up a whole host of clients to keep the business development links alive.  Scott White has also joined us and we have another recruitment search underway to bring you another development resource.

Emma and I aren’t retiring but we want to ensure you get all the support that you need (and deserve).  We will still be around and will be planning to develop our relationships with you so that we can better anticipate your needs for the future and keep ourselves at the forefront of delivery.  So we welcome the new team members and the new process that gets our clients closer to development and we look forward to seeing our clients delighted with the new service.

Zipporah's overseas projects: Republic of Ireland

Zipporah has always been looking to expand overseas and most recently we have begun to engage with organisations in the Republic of Ireland, not quite as far as Australia whom we have been progressing with for some time now, but overseas nonetheless.

It was on recent business trip to meet with an organisation in Ireland, that I was quite surprised by just how different they were from our own UK organisations, especially since we are only a short hop across the sea. The relaxed nature in the manner in which we were greeted on arrival at the location for the meeting made for a refreshing change, no interrogation into our entire background history or the reason for our visit at the front desk here, just a quick and polite hello, sign in and then sent off to find our own way to the meeting room.

Mind you the simple instructions of “top of the stairs, turn right, then left, right again and at the end of the corridor is your room” in a large building that you have never visited before can in itself present you with a few problems prior to a meeting, fortunately we didn’t make any wrong turns and I hope to be able to report in the near future with some developments on the outcome of our meeting.

Government and IT spending

After recently reading an article on how Government are wasting an ‘obscene’ amount of money on failed IT projects, I was pretty surprised to hear the number of these projects that actually fail to get lifted off the ground. The fact that Zipporah now have close to 60 live systems with authorities throughout the UK, with strong, solid relationships with each of its clients proves that this idea that IT systems being a waste of money is not always true.

I think it comes down to experience of suppliers, and those without the knowledge of how to overcome potential problems within the public sector can sometimes become unstuck, resulting in projects being cancelled or being listed as failed. Luckily Zipporah have a wealth of experience of working with local authorities and are aware that sometimes you can be presented with challenging obstacles. However this doesn’t mean that this could potentially result an unsuccessful project, we feel that we have the required communication skills and key knowledge of how local authorities work to ensure that these problems can be overcome and the project can continue towards a successful implementation.

Government Procurement Service

Attendance at the LGSAS framework induction day in London was the ideal opportunity to learn more about just exactly how the Government Procurement service will work in practice to deliver its mutual goal with us in targeting savings for the UK Public Sector as a whole and its role to specifically to deliver centralised procurement for Central Government Departments.

It was interesting to learn about a wide range of topics that included just who can use Government Procurement Service, why they should use Government Procurement Service through to matters about how we as organisation can market and utilise our solutions via the procurement portal.

One of the more interesting facts that came to light was just exactly how the organisation was funded. After all an organisation that operates and manages so many government procurement exercises and framework must surely come at some significant cost to the taxpayer before it can actually deliver the savings its promises? Well absolutely not, as the Government Procurement Service is a Trading Fund, using a supplier commission model to fund operations and support continuous improvement in Government’s procurement capability, which to mind is the only government service delivering significant savings at absolutely zero cost to the British taxpayer.

Yortime at the City of York Council

 

Yortime starts to take shape as phase one is delivered

The City of York went live recently with its Yortime Website, which is completely powered by Zipporah. Yortime is the place to find activities, events, clubs, groups, open days, courses, taster sessions, family fun days and much more. With a constantly changing events calendar and hundreds of local community groups in our directory York residents are sure to find something happening in their local area.  

The Lifelong Learning and Culture service arm of City of York Council Learning, Culture and Children’s Services Directorate required Zipporahs solution to allow the following services to introduce on-line booking for their events, rooms and courses via the Yortime website:

• Parks & Open Spaces
• Libraries and Heritage
• Adult and Community Education
• Play Team
• Arts and Culture
• Sports and Active Leisure

The solution now facilitates on-line booking and payments for any of the mentioned services in a central place where they can be marketed and promoted to both the residents of York and the wider population, where they were once managed via either standalone IT systems or manually.

The solution was not only required to provide the functionality to deliver on-line bookings and payments via our Yortime website for the above services in the first instance but has the flexibility to be expanded to include a wider range of services in the future in other areas of the Council.

I hope to bring you news of this expansion over the coming months.

Walsall Council

As we mentioned earlier on in the year, Walsall Council have chosen Zipporah’s system to handle appointments within their Registrars Department, with our proven track record in the Public Sector being an important factor in the decision to award us the contract. A key function of the solution will be to help the Registration Department achieve a more efficient service, handling a range of appointment types including Birth and Death Registrations. Over the coming weeks we’ll be working closely with the authority, taking into account their specific requirements with the aim of delivering a successful solution in the near future.

The Midlands area is fast becoming something of a hot-spot for Zipporah, with Walsall joining Sandwell, Dudley, Leicester and Warwickshire as users of a number of our solutions, providing us with a valuable insight to the needs of end users in this area.

Zipporah welcomes the new team members

The new additions to the Zipporah team and our current expansion plans have meant that my role as business development Manager for Zipporah could never be more exciting. I was disappointed that valued colleague and project manager had decided to leave us recently for a complete career change, but what cannot be described as disappointing was my Directors response to this change of circumstance to the organisation.

Following a thorough review of the various links between the client and Zipporah’s own departments, coupled with the long-term expansion plans it was decided to put in place an entirely new team whose sole focus will be on the delivery of client and internal projects.

From the Sales department’s perspective it could not be better, knowing that when passing a new project over; we will now have two new business analysts to handle the often complex client workflow and matching the business process requirements against our own solutions to ensure that we deliver on-time and exactly to the agreed specification.

The expansion didn’t just stop with the two new business analysts, because recognising how important it is to deliver a project on time and to spec is only half the story, what also needs to be considered is a rigorous testing process to ensure that applications actually work error free. So for the first time an experienced Software tester has been employed to develop the existing testing process, develop a strategy for specific client testing and monitoring the process for client releases for any bugs fixes etc.

I cannot praise this new team more highly, as after working with them for several weeks and following the commencement of my first project under this regime, the benefits of the strong link they have already formed between the clients and sales has already become very apparent.

I look forward to working with them on many new and existing Zipporah projects.

Zipporah and its high customer satifaction rate

As one of the youngest members of the Zipporah team working within the Sales Department, I always enjoy attending meetings and demos, getting the opportunity to see first hand the positive reaction we seem to receive wherever we go. However one thing I’ve realised is that this attitude towards Zipporah is not restricted to new or potential customers, but also existing clients that in some cases have worked alongside us for long periods of time.

This week along with Scott, I visited Buckinghamshire County Council, who has been enjoying the benefits of a range of our solutions for a number of years, including our Registrars system, as well as ZIPI. The main purpose of the meeting was to demo another of our modules, but while we were there, it gave both parties the opportunity to have a small review of how everything was working with the existing Zipporah solutions that they already had. It was great for me to see just how well we were received at the council, everyone seemed to know all about Zipporah, and were particularly aware of all the hard work that we have put in over the years to ensure that we provided the council with a solution that was to the highest of standards. 

This sound attitude toward us is not limited to just one or two clients, in fact you would struggle to find one of our customers that doesn’t have something good to say about the company, and I for one am looking forward to creating more positive partnerships with potential customers across the UK and beyond.

Social Media Marketing

I’ve been writing my blogs for a few weeks now, and checking in on Zipporah’s Facebook, whilst also making sure LinkedIn requests are all set and trying to ensure everyone is up to date with my tweets.  All whilst trying to do the job that I actually get paid for.  I never thought of myself as the sort of person who would have an issue with all this but I think I must be getting old as trying to juggle all this is exhausting.

No sooner do I complete a meeting but I should be tweeting about it, making contact with the people at the meeting via LinkedIn and thinking whether it will make a blog story.  Not to mention trying to answer the variety of emails that await.  The only problem is that it has to be done.  OK, right now no-one reads my blog except for you and my Facebook page only has friends who work in Zipporah or want me to send them £1,000 so in return they will send me £10,000 and I have no idea what purpose my LinkedIn serves but it’s all part of the strategy and these days it’s a key element of marketing.  I’m promised that one day you will be joined by lots of blog readers and Zipporah will achieve the fame it so richly deserves.  I believe it too, a good marketing strategy and the use of social media makes a big difference these days.  I’m lucky in many ways, I only have to write this – someone else will sort out posting, someone else does the main task of making sure stories are posted on Facebook and I have the right contacts on LinkedIn so I shouldn’t really complain.

So here’s to you being joined by many more and to the next marketing craze and a quick thanks to Kayleigh who is trying to control all of this.  For those of you trying to manage such a campaign on your own then you have my sympathy, it’s not easy to do this without forgetting about the day job which is what all this is for.  If you can get help do….