Eximium engaged by Denplan to help improve key IT system and processes

I’m excited to announce that we’ve been engaged by a major new customer, Denplan in Winchester, to help with their systems development work.

Denplan is the UK’s leading dental payment plan provider, with approximately 80% share of the dental payment plan market.  There are 6,500 treating dentists across the UK (approximately a third of practising dentists) treating over 1.8 million Denplan patients.  They are rated 6th in the ‘Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to Work For 2008′, recognised as an Investor in People, and are an appointed representative of AXA PPP Healthcare Ltd.

We’ll be complimenting their existing IT department, and their other IT providers, by supplying help, advice and development effort.  They use a package for their insurance processes that we have a good deal of experience of.  We will be spending time working with their business people to help them improve process efficiency and generally adding value to the business by getting their system doing more for them - a key part of what we are all about!

As always, there are plenty of niggly issues with the current systems and processes that we’ll be able to help them sort out.  More importantly, we’ll also be helping them expand the system to support their strategic plans and objectives.

Obviously, we’re always delighted to take on a new client, but large customers like Denplan are even more exciting as the possibilities for us to increase the business benefits of their IT systems are extremely far reaching.

Watch this space for news of successful projects!

Expansion onto the Butterfield Business & Technology Park

Following the announcement of our impending expansion to Butterfield Business Park;

http://www.eximium.net/blog/index.php/2008/06/business-advice-hertfordshire-3/

We are very pleased to announce that we are now successfully installed in our new, larger office at the Basepoint Business & Innovation Centre.

As previously mentioned, the centre is an environmentally friendly building  with a calm and tranquil atmosphere.  It has certainly worked wonders on our stress levels.  We are especially enjoying the view.  We can see the pond with the ducks and moor hens on it, going about their daily lives.  In the recent sunshine it has been quite picturesque and you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was actually warm outside!

The building is to be officially launched at 2.45pm on Wednesday 24th September.  We are very much looking forward to the grand opening and being part of the new movement towards a greater environmental consciousness within the working environment.   This has become even more important since the announcement of the forthcoming carbon cap and trade scheme.  This was detailed in the government’s 2007 Energy White Paper as part of their Carbon Reduction Commitment, which proposes to reduce UK CO2 emissions by 1.2m tonnes by 2020.

The move is an expansion and we do still have our office in Capability Green, so you can still contact us on those details, but the new office is our new head office, so should you wish to contact us there, the details are as follows;

 Eximium Limited
 Basepoint Business & Innovation Centre
 110 Butterfield Business Park
 Luton
 Bedfordshire
 LU2 8DL

 Tel: 01582 439 720
 Fax: 01582 439 725

Latest news on our public sector strategy

Since the announcement of our successful accreditation by BSI under ISO 9001, we’ve made an important move into securing public sector work.  The potential for us in this sector was a major strategic reason for ensuring our compliance to this key quality standard.  We’re now going through the process of finding contract opportunities that suit our skills and putting together tenders.  There are lots of opportunities out there but public sector procurement procedures are quite a minefield. 

So, to help us navigate our way through the complexities of the tendering process, I’m pleased to announce that we have engaged the services of Steve Emmett at CIP4B&IT Ltd.  As an expert in the field of public sector buying, Steve has been helping us with the task of identifying suitable opportunities and creating relevant tenders.  Earlier this month, he helped us work on our first major tender, for a contract to supply an online information portal to a major local government body.  Following a pre-qualification process, we were successfully shortlisted and given the opportunity to tender.  In what was an extremely short timeframe, Steve provided some vital input into our tender document, and we were all delighted with the quality of both the final proposal we produced as a result, and the subsequent presentation we were required to make to the awarding authority’s assessment panel.

Unfortunately, we heard this week that we haven’t won that particular contract.  Obviously, the whole team is disappointed.  However, it was always unlikely that we would win our first tender.  Nevertheless, it was a great learning experience for the team and, with the feedback we’ll get from this bid, Steve can help us go on to put a better proposal together for the next tender, and so on.  I’m very optimistic that, with Steve’s help, we’ll have a great chance of winning contracts in the near future.  Like many things, this process will take effort and it won’t be easy.  But, with such a high percentage of all buying coming from this sector, it’s something we can’t afford to ignore.

Watch this space for more news as our campaign progresses.

Steve can be contacted at steveemmett@icfba.biz for further information on the services he provides, including how he helps businesses to secure suitable public sector contracts.

Dates for Business Link IT Seminars

Following on from this post last month, about the IT seminars for business people I’ll be presenting in conjunction with Business Link East:

http://www.eximium.net/blog/index.php/2008/07/business-advice-bedfordshire-11/

I’m pleased to announce that I now have the dates and venues for each of the 6 sessions. 

Here they are:

20th November 2008 – Knights Hill Hotel, Kings Lynn
26th November 2008 – Wyboston Lakes, Bedford
11th February 2009 – Holiday Inn, Peterborough
19th February 2009 – BioPark, Welwyn
5th March 2009 – Denny Brothers Conference Centre, Bury St Edmunds
25th March 2009 – Pontlands Park, Chelmsford

The session is entitled “Getting Maximum Benefit from Your IT Systems” and will last for 2 hours, starting at 10am.  Last week, I gave a 20 minute taster of the session to the events team and I had lots of positive feedback.  There will be room for 30 business owners, directors and managers at each session (no previous IT knowledge or experience necessary!) so I’d be delighted to see you at one of these sessions.  The cost hasn’t been decided yet, but it will either be fully or part funded by Business Link, so the most it is likely to cost is £30 per person.

Please just drop me a line or leave a comment on this post if you would be interested in coming along to one of these.

The Hertfordshire Business Independent (HBI) June Networking Event - Update

Following on from this post last month:

http://www.eximium.net/blog/index.php/2008/06/business-advice-hertfordshire/

about the above event that I was the speaker for, I just wanted to give you an update on the evening.

As featured in this month’s copy of the magazine, the event went very well and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  It was well organised and the Quality Hotel in Hatfield was an excellent venue.  My talk was described by the magazine as ‘lively’ - which isn’t bad for any talk relating to IT, as it can sometimes be a boring subject!

There were 60 business people present in the end, so I decided to structure my talk around the advisory article I wrote earlier in the year about the lessons to be learned from the issues at Terminal 5.  I covered 10 key areas to be careful of when implementing any substantial business change, especially those connected with technology.

Thanks to the team at HBI for asking me to speak at the event and to all the people that contacted me and came along:  Ryan Tobias from Business For Breakfast, Ryan Yuill and Mandy Andrews from Applied IT Solutions, Victoria Cox from Thomas Cox and Co, and Mike Waddell from Adsidia.  Also, I’m pleased to say that Ryan Tobias and Mike Waddell both won prizes in the raffle!

I highly recommend these networking events – they are informal, friendly and productive.  The next event is on 22nd September at the Cheshunt Marriott in Broxbourne.

To read the coverage on the June event in the digital edition of the magazine, please use the following links:

To read a version of the article my talk was based on, go to http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?eid=1e736ccc-e947-4644-aff4-1c60f479c390&pnum=16

To see the feature about the event, go to http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?eid=1e736ccc-e947-4644-aff4-1c60f479c390&pnum=30

Also, if you’re interested in having me speak at your own event, please just drop me a line from here www.eximium.net/meettheteam.asp

Eximium announces successful accreditation by BSI to ISO 9001

Business IT specialists Eximium announced today that they have been awarded accreditation by BSI to ISO 9001 for all of their four key services: IT training, IT recruitment, IT consulting and IT solutions.  This has been the result of over 15 months work by the management team to implement a quality management system into the business that complies with the stringent requirements of the standard.

A key reason for the move was the desire to take on more work in the public sector, where ISO 9001 has become a minimum supplier requirement.  In addition, few IT companies have implemented the standard, so it was also intended to set Eximium apart from its competitors as a company that cares about quality and customer satisfaction, at its core.

Managing director, Derrick Cameron, said, “We’re delighted that the hard work and dedication of the team has paid off.  When we first started this process, we weren’t entirely sure how it would work and whether we could do it at all, but we all feel we’ve been through a massively useful process, and our business has benefited enormously from the framework of continuous improvement the ISO 9001 standard provides.”

Paula Wheatcroft, operations director at Eximium, added, “We knew our business was already a good fit for the type of business model ISO 9001 proposes, but we’ve learnt so much from the management principles within the standard and from the help and advice BSI have provided.  We really are a better organisation for it, and we can only go from strength to strength with the processes we now have in place to ensure we focus on customer needs, learn from our mistakes, and constantly improve what we do based on customer feedback.”

Eximium work with business owners, directors and managers to help them get more benefit out of their IT systems.  They can be contacted on 01582 635 078 or at www.eximium.net for advice or for further information.

IT seminars in conjunction with Business Link East

I’m excited to announce that we’ve been selected by Business Link East to provide a series of seminars as part of their ‘growing business’ events programme.

We’ll be developing and presenting a 2 hour briefing session for them, aimed at SME business owners, directors and managers entitled ‘Getting Maximum Benefit From Your IT Systems’, in their October 2008 to March 2009 events season.  Based on our popular 1-day seminar, it will be packed with essential knowledge and skills to help delegates get the maximum possible benefit for their businesses out of their IT systems and IT providers.  There will be 6 sessions at various venues across the region.

You’ll be able to book online via http://www.bookevents.org/events/events_browse_results.asp?supplier=01&suppliername=Business+Link soon - keep an eye out for it at a venue near you.  I hope to see you there!

A deal is struck for expansion onto the Butterfield Business & Technology Park

Over recent weeks, we’ve been finalising plans for expansion and I’m pleased to say negotiations have now been completed for us to take some space at the prestigious Butterfield Business and Technology Park in Luton.  We’ve decided to establish a presence at the new Basepoint Business & Innovation Centre that was built on the park last year.  We’ll be taking a 1200sqft space at the centre, hopefully at the start of September.

Butterfield is just off the A505 and within easy reach of the M1, Luton Airport and the town centre, and is an 85 acre site.  The Business & Innovation Centre cost £18.5 million and was funded by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) to the tune of £14 million. The remaining £4.5 million was provided by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and the Government Office for the East of England (GO-East).

Great attention has been paid towards providing an environmentally friendly building and we have been very impressed by the green solutions to needs such as heating and air conditioning.  It’s also a terrific looking building, with good use made of natural materials and there is plenty of glass and open space.  The whole atmosphere is professional but also fresh and tranquil.  There is even a pond!

We’re very excited about our new space and we’re looking forward to sampling the new working environment at the centre.  There’s a lot to organise first, though!

The Hertfordshire Business Independent - Networking Event

I’m delighted to say that I’ve been asked by one of the magazines that have previously published my articles, The Hertfordshire Business Independent, to speak at their forthcoming Networking Event on Thursday 26th June.  I’ve been given a 20 minute slot to entertain the 50 or so business people present so I’m working on that now!

If anyone is interested in attending this event, the details are listed below.  You can either drop me a line or contact them directly.  I’d be pleased to see you there.

Latest news on our ISO 9001 accreditation

Over the last year, we’ve all been working hard to implement ISO 9001 into the business.  I can’t say it’s been easy!  It was a daunting task at the beginning, but it’s been a real experience, and it’s helped us and our business in so many ways.  The great thing is that ISO 9001 is a framework of best business practice principles that you adapt to your own business and your way of working, making the quality management system your own.  You can buy off the shelf systems, but they’re an attempt to make something generic out of something that should be very specific, and closely linked into your business, so we didn’t go down that route.  I’m glad we made that decision because it really feels as though we’ve invested our time and money well, and now we have something that we can really use and truly belongs to us all.

I must say that BSI have been fantastic.  I attended their 2-day ‘Implementing ISO 9001′ training course last year, and it really explained what to do, the problems to watch out for, and answered most of my questions about how the approach applied to our business. I don’t think we would have created such a personalised and useful quality management system, as well as we have, if I hadn’t been on the course.  Equally, Steve Mason, our BSI Client Manager, has been instrumental in guiding me down a path to create a robust system without over complicating anything.

Quality is such an important part of what we do that we aren’t treating our quality management system as a separate entity at all, it’s just our business management approach; a completely integral part of how we run our business.  Fortunately for us, our business principles were a close fit with ISO 9001 already, so the idea of things like monitoring and measuring quality, having a customer focused approach, and taking corrective actions when things go wrong, weren’t new to us.  For the most part, we just needed to adapt our procedures and formalise our approach in certain areas, to fit with the standards. There’s no question in our minds now though - we are a better business as a result.

We’ve implemented our quality management system into our procedures now and I’m delighted to say it’s working well.  It isn’t perfect yet, but a key lesson ISO 9001 teaches you is that it’s okay to make mistakes, as that’s all part of the process of continual improvement.  What’s important is showing that you have a mechanism to help you learn from those mistakes, and putting a process in place to stop the same mistake from happening again.

Our initial assessments with BSI have gone well - we’re now waiting for the final assessment at the beginning of July.  At the moment though, it’s looking good for us to get that coveted kitemark!

Eximium joins Luton Business For Breakfast® group

Business IT specialists Eximium Ltd announced today that they have joined the Luton Business For Breakfast® group. The club meets at the Menzies Strathmore Hotel in the Arndale centre between 6:45am and 8:30am every other Tuesday, to share best business practise and exchange quality business referrals.

Derrick Cameron, MD of Eximium said “We are delighted to be working with Ryan and the other members of this group to grow our business, and to help them grow theirs. We’ve already had a number of valuable opportunities come from the group and it’s great to be part of a club with such friendly and like-minded business people.

“This group fits well with our marketing strategy. We don’t employ salespeople, as they can turn people off. Our services and our approach sell themselves, and recommendations and referrals are the most powerful way for us to spread the word about what we do. I can recommend this group to anyone looking to do business in the area, who wants to have an opportunity to meet and nurture new contacts and benefit from a fun, friendly and professional approach to business breakfast networking.”

The group is run by Ryan Tobias. Ryan said “I’m delighted to have Eximium on board. They are exactly the type of forward-thinking, growing company that we’re looking to have as members. Derrick has a great approach to the meetings and is always keen to help other members to grow their business, which is to everyone’s benefit.”

Ryan can be contacted at ryan@bforb.co.uk.

Eximium becomes a McAfee partner

Business IT specialists Eximium have announced a new partnership agreement with international security software provider McAfee.

The Luton based firm are already a registered Microsoft partner and believe that this new relationship with one of the world’s biggest IT security software companies will have a number of benefits for their customers.

“There are a huge number of products on the market and we carefully evaluate anything before we consider re-selling. After extensive testing we were very impressed with the McAfee products ability to cope with viruses and spam, its flexibility, and the fact that it allows us to install and update the product on our clients’ computers quickly and without leaving the office. This means we can offer a faster service but for less money” comments Eximium’s Technical Director, Derrick Cameron.

Eximium joins the Chamber of Commerce for Bedfordshire and Luton

Eximium announced today that it is to join the Chamber of Commerce for Bedfordshire and Luton.

The Chamber exists to promote the interests of local firms and encourage investment into the local economy. Derrick Cameron, Technical Director of Eximium comments “As we are based in the local community it makes sense to join an organisation that helps to promote the area. As well as enjoying the benefits of membership, we are looking forward to working with local firms in the area and being able to put something back into the business community”

Eximium specialise in helping companies resolve their IT problems and also helping firms make the most of their business through the best use of their IT. “We are offering our £500 fact find service free to all Chamber members and we are confident that they will gain a lot from it” adds Cameron.

Eximium registers with BSI for ISO 9001 & 20000 accreditation

Eximium has always put quality first and this month has registered with BSI for accreditation to the ISO quality standards of ISO 9001 (Quality Management) and IS0 20000 (IT Service Management).

This means that over the next 12 months, the company will be working closely with BSI to ensure that processes meet the stringent requirements.

Derrick Cameron, Technical Director of Eximium comments “Our accreditation with BSI to these standards will prove to our customers and suppliers alike that we view quality as a highly important aspect of our relationship with them”.

For more details about how Eximium is striving to meet high standards in all aspects of its business, contact them directly.

Eximium expands into new offices to accommodate growth

Business IT specialists Eximium have completed their move into their new office space at Regus Business Centre, Capability Green, Luton.

The decision to leave their current premises was largely down to space and the desire to have more flexibility in their accommodation.

“Our new offices offer a wide range of meeting rooms of various sizes. This means that we can meet up with clients, and offer training and workshops sessions, no matter how big the number. It’s also just off the M1 and close to Luton Airport so we can be in London, Birmingham or Glasgow for that matter, in just over an hour” comments Paula Wheatcroft, Eximium’s Operations Director.

The new office is situated in the Capability Green business development, which is the premier business park of the east of England, according to the Bedfordshire & Luton Economic Development Partnership. It is close to the M1, M25, mainline trains into Kings Cross, London and Luton Airport. Eximium will share the site with companies such as Ernst & Young, Siemens plc, Bae Systems, Anritsu & Astra Zeneca.

Eximium becomes a Microsoft partner

Business IT Specialist Eximium announced today that they are to become registered Microsoft partners with immediate effect.

Microsoft is one of the world’s largest companies and offers the most widely used software on domestic and business computers. The new relationship means that Eximium can offer specialised advice and more flexibility to customers.

“We are delighted to now be considered as a Microsoft partner and are looking forward to offering new services to our customers, including sourcing Microsoft products directly from us” comments Eximium’s Technical Director, Derrick Cameron. “This also means that we can work with our customers to ensure they have the best licensing arrangement for new and existing software, so that they are not paying more than they have to, but can also access the latest Microsoft products”.