Duty of Care: Business Travel Safety

Duty of Care: Business Travel Safety

Rick Marengo

As a supplier of lone worker applications we were thinking about our own commuting to and from AXLR8 and business travel in general which is growing now in the UK as people in commerce are mostly back in the office. The employer has to take due care of workers. The law also stipulates1 that the staff must carry some responsibility for their own safety.

Every Monday morning we have our regular sales and management meetings. Yesterday, we added in a tyre check.

Lessons learned

  • Know what your pressures are. This will be in the glove compartment, door frame of door edge or in the owners manual. Failing that, try online and at a professional main dealer
  • Set an alarm every week (Sunday morning?) with you tyre pressures on it and the car. So Mine says Hyundai 36F&B and Toyota 33F 32B (B is back wheels and F is front wheels)
  • If you have a foot pump use that in the convenience of your home but check it monthly against the garage with a professional pump for peace of mind.
  • If you use a garage or supermarket petrol station please do not hog the machine and hold up the queue whist you take your valve caps off. Unscrew the caps whilst you wait in the queue. Then you will be able to pump your tyres up in less time and use less change in the machine. Once filled, immediately move your car forward a few yards to let the next person into the machine area to pump their tyres whilst you replace your caps. The quicker the queue, the less likely someone who joined it with the best of intentions will give up.
  • It is better to get you hands dirty than to have a crash.

Don’t forget oil, windscreen awash liquid, radiator, etc., as well!

Stay safe. Prepare for all trips and build in time to pause and allow others out of turnings and not have to speed. Planning is everything. Distractions are dangerous. If you get in a car tired and cause a crash, nobody will congratulate you on your work ethic.

1 If you are an employer or employee Health and Safety law needs professional advice. However, if you want to read up and acquire general knowledge, google The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Health and Safety at Work regulations 1999.

ACF Direct Case Study

Charlotte Riches

ACF DIRECT
Finance Solutions for Business

“AXLR8 have worked tirelessly to develop a bespoke Proposal System, CRM and Quotation tool on our behalf. They have been extremely supportive.”

Simon Rose
Managing Director

www.acfdirect.co.uk

ACF Direct have been using AXLR8’s finance system for 5 years and this case study demonstrates why.  

System choice

In 2016 ACF Direct’s system was retired from the marketplace, leaving them in the position of having to research other options. They knew what they liked with their old system and wanted to replicate this elsewhere; being the software authors, AXLR8 was able to offer this to them. Additionally, AXLR8’s finance system had extra features that reduced the cost of compliance and increased the quality and transparency of their information for audits.

AXLR8 are widely used in the financial services community.  Our systems are used for investor relationship management, KYC, money laundering checks and many other compliance requirements.

AXLR8 are renowned for keeping all customer details, files, documents, notes, and correspondence in one place, enabling easy profiling of contacts.  This saves your team time that they can spend with clients instead. 

ACF Direct were able to benefit from additional automation:

  • Trigaware(TM) alerts you to important dates such as  imminent expiry of contracts or DPA permission, etc.
  • ExchangeVault stores emails, skype and other calls with clients’ files so that you never have to add them manually.

Project challenges

ACF Direct’s main project challenges were that they needed:

  • CRM
  • To be able to process proposals quickly
  • Calculator
  • Ability to find new customers fast
  • To be able to produce reports
  • To be compliant within their industry with ease
  • To provide information for auditing purposes

Solution:

AXLR8 offered ACF Direct a cost-effective solution which addressed all their challenges in one go whilst giving them extra features that would benefit their business. Their main challenge was solved with AXLR8’s proposal management system as it processes proposals efficiently and with ease, including having the calculator they need for their day-to-day activities.

Benefits:

Extra features like the new AXLR8 portals made it easier for them to put more energy and be better informed in their client relationships; this helped them grow to where they are today.

AXLR8’s Mailing Manager enables them to send bulk marketing mailings to profiled prospects in seconds, so increasing their visibility in the marketplace, and ultimately bringing in new business.

AXLR8’s Trigaware system and ExchangeVault helped ACF Direct keep on top of their procedures to stay compliant within the finance industry.

Software as a Service: a checklist

Rick Marengo

Software as a Service (SaaS) has revolutionised our lives and freed most of us from large up-front development costs, expensive on-premise hardware and associated software and networks.

You just sign up and everything magically appears with your business data, pictures, documents. It is all backed up and safe. However, have you checked the provider is actually doing what they promised? AXLR8 have been in the SaaS business for over 2 decades and trust many suppliers but check everyone.

What questions should I ask an SaaS supplier?

Here are a few questions we suggest that you ask your SaaS supplier.

Business Stability

  1. Do you track their published accounts every year? Remember, the pandemic has tested all companies and many SaaS companies may be running on empty. More companies go out of business coming out of a recessionary period than going in to it!
  2. Are they debt free or do they have a negative balance sheet? If negative, is it getting worse year on year? Could the bank “pull the plug” tomorrow?
  3. Is the Supplier financially stable? Remember, if they miss payments to a lender, any of their key staff or any of their hosting and technology suppliers, they could disappear overnight and your data and system will probably be lost!
  4. Does the SaaS company have a portfolio of markets they work in so that a change in one market does not wipe them out overnight? Importantly, after the pandemic, are they already “running on empty”?
  5. How long have they been in business? Is their business growing or, if it has been through some recessions and recovered competently, all the better!
  6. Do they have many clients in their portfolio?
  7. Do they have an expert stable team or is there staff turnover? Worst of all, is it a one or two person company which could disappear with the health or motivation of one person?

My business critical data

  1. Do they answer their telephones in an emergency?
  2. Can I get my data from my SaaS supplier (free or for a reasonable small labour and materials fee)?
  3. Where can I read my contract for the service? If it was just something I clicked “OK” to when I signed up, then was there a clause to say they can change it at any time?
  4. Do I own my data entirely or do the supplier feel they own it?
  5. Does my supplier understand their responsibility as Data Processor and how it affects my liability under GDPR as the Data Controller?
  6. Who decides access rights for my staff? What happens when staff join or leave?
  7. If I am using the system free of charge, do the suppliers expect something back and if so, what?
  8. If I am paying, what if I miss a payment? Is there a small or large admin penalty? When does all my data get deleted? No supplier can store it indefinitely due to GDPR DP liabilities. If they do not delete my data, what are they doing with it?
  9. When can I give notice and what are the implications for recovering my data and any associated documents, mails, pictures, etc?
  10. Is the SaaS supplier compliant with cyber security standards? For example, can you find them on the IASME Cyber Essentials Plus compliant companies?
  11. Do your SaaS supplier have a reputable company for regular annual penetration testing to check security of the systems holding your (customer) data?
  12. What are their security policies?
  13. What are their privacy policies and can you find them on the Information Commissioner’s registration list?
  14. Can I talk to someone – a real human being – about the technical or commercial issues that arise?
  15. Can I customise and personalise the system and how does this affect my rights to upgrades?
  16. How often do they actually do back ups? Nightly, hourly, weekly? Are back ups hot? In other words, if my server goes down, does another one come up immediately? These different levels of disaster readiness come with very different price tickets. What level of resilience do I need?
  17. Can they scale with my business?
  18. Will they offer training for super users of the system?

Build vs Buy: should we just develop our own in-house system?

Before developing your own system with a software developer or an in-house developer, you should also be able answer the above questions.

You will be aware of the well known economics of software development:

If it costs 1 pound to develop a system,

it costs 10 pounds to implement and another 10 pounds to document it

15 pounds a year to maintain it and

150 pounds a year to support it.

Outside developers bidding for your business conveniently forget that in their pitch!

On top of that, complying with basic security and GDPR is very costly and you would be paying for it on your own. A SaaS supplier can share those costs around hundreds or even thousands of users.

A reputable SaaS supplier can also bring specialist expertise and new modules from the accumulated experience of thousands of users to your business. They can concentrate on updating their platform, performance, bug fixes, encryption, security. Do not underestimate these expenses. Their helpdesk is always there. Your inhouse developer could be off sick or go on holiday – or leave the company just when you have a critical repair.

Security incident today

Rick Marengo

Thirty five client websites, including our own Staffing specialist website, have been affected by a DDOS attack this morning.

No business critical business applications are affected.

Email is not affected.

It should be resolved by the engineers at the datacentre soon. These problems are rare and this is the first in perhaps ten or more years.

Thanks for your patience. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information.

Contact Field Marketing – Success through talent

Charlotte Riches

AXLR8 have now been supporting field marketing companies collecting data in store for 15 years.

Our clients have taught us so many things in that time.  Likewise, they are always learning and solving new problems to help their brands and other customers.

To celebrate we have created this video to explain how CFM, a growing leader, is challenging the top players in the retail merchandising and promotion fields.

It concentrates on two current challenges.

Building and developing the team

Clients need to attract the best talent in these competitive times for all recruiters.  They then need to build, train and deploy their teams on client projects.  CFM have the talent management team in place to achieve this using the AXLR8 ATS and to work with trusted specialist long-term business partners to supply staff where required.

Field Data Collection and Client Presentation

The value added by good field marketing and merchandising providers is the immediate, high volume, accurate data reliably collected in the field (e.g. sales and stock numbers, competitor pricing, before and after pictures during POS and merchandising projects)

Volume collection

Using their AXLR8 apps staff are booked on projects and specific store visits and collect data in high volumes in store.  The system has to handle thousands of data items every hour from hundreds of store visits on multiple projects.  App reliability and central database resilience is of paramount importance.  At the same time the questionnaires must be flexible so they are easy to create and easy to change midway through campaigns.

Customised client portals

Once the data starts to come in, the numbers, reports, pictures and other information has to be moderated and presented well to their clients on a secure portal

The system allows CFM to concentrate on client engagement staff relations and creative ideas as they know the admin is being handled by a reliable system that AXLR8 has customised to their needs.

This means they can focus on client specific needs. No wonder they are so successful.

AXLR8 achieve Cyber Essentials Plus 2022-3

AXLR8 achieve Cyber Essentials Plus 2022-3

Rick Marengo

AXLR8 have now completed our audit for 2022-3. We are spending increasing amounts on cyber security every year. This puts AXLR8 ahead of most competitors in the markets in which we supply and support our systems.

The Journey

We would love to report that we flew through but let’s just say but the pre-audits were very useful. We are a great deal more secure again this year as a result. It will be even tougher next year as IASME are enhancing the standards. The bar is getting higher.

However, it does not just stop at the audit pass, like you we are bringing on new people and machines and constantly changing our networks for expansion. That means we need the changes to be within cyber security guidelines and we need to maintain constant vigilance with regular user tests and evidence software upgrades and security updates are happening.

Once again, we would like to thank RightCue Assurance for the audit and helpful guidance for maintaining standards in preparation for the tougher new audit in 2024.

Why should I care?

You would be concerned in a close proximity of someone coughing without putting their hand over their mouth or buying a meal in a restaurant where the chef did not wash their hands. You should be even more worried if you have a software supplier – especially as SaaS supplier – who does not maintain standards of cyber security that are audited by a reputable body. How could you trust them with your private data and mission critical system?

Please call 01344 776500 if you would like any details for this or if you are considering your own Cyber Essentials programme.

AXLR8-CyberEssentialsPlus
AXLR8 pass Cyber Essentials Plus 2022-3

Working Lunch with AXLR8: Public Sector

Rick Marengo

AXLR8 will be running a free series of training courses for the Public Sector covering the AXLR8 IRM (Information Request Manager) system for FOI, SAR, Reviews and Appeals and Complaints.

We hope you will find these workshops as useful as AXLR8’s commercial clients did in September’s very successful series for their industries.

The 12 sessions will run at 12:30 on Wednesdays from November 10th, 2021 to February 16th, 2022.

We run all our sessions over Zoom because of the quality of presentation and reliability. However, the feedback is that this is not possible for most public sector sites. Therefore, we will run it over MS Teams. Please be patient in the first couple of sessions whilst we find our feet using this as a webinar medium.

The agenda for the training sessions are as follows:

DayTitleAgendaAimed atDate
1Introduction – overview and definitionsWorkflow supported definitions list management of an IRUsers10th November
2Workflow KPIsDashboards, tracking IRs.Users17th November
3Logging a requestRequest creation, auto creation, adding notes, adding documentsUsers24th November 
4IRs and activities (tasks)Activities required to achieve the response to the IR.Users1st December
5Progress trackingThe calendar: Bank holidays, FOIs and SARs. Public and private notes and documents. Alerts, triggers and expediting weekend, working days and holidays. Users8th December
6Information request manager portalAccess rules, applicant blind, reports, documents and updating progress.Users15th December 
7Reviews and appealsReviews, appeals, timescales & audit. How to read audit trails, notes, history and mail attach. Users12th January 
8Public disclosure logPreparation and clean up, notes, documents, privacy. API for web presentation.SuperUsers19th January 
9Super user functions 1Data cleaning and retention, keeping your data clean, removing duplicates, DPIA and information asset register. SuperUsers26th January 
10Super user functions 2Drop down menus, lookups, labelsSuperUsers2nd February 
11Super user functions 3Report builderSuperUsers9th February
12Super user functions 4Creating new user accounts, granting and revoking access rights.SuperUsers16th February 

For more information on our Information Compliance Systems: http://www.requesttracker.co.uk/

AXLR8 Cyber Essentials

Charlotte Riches

We are excited to announce that we have passed our assessment for the current Cyber Essentials again this year! In November 2021 we are returning to Penetration Testing to update findings from 2020 from an outside expert party. In December 2021 we will be audited for Cyber Essentials Plus.

We can highly recommend the detailed, professional prompt and practical approach of RightCue Assurance who led us through the process once again. Thanks!

With their help we are now preparing for Cyber Essentials + in the next two months.

#cybersecurity#datasecurity#GPDR#cyberessentials#completedproject#compliance#IASMEconsortium

Power cut today

Rick Marengo

There is a power problem in our area.

Telephones

The phones will still work. We have configured the RingCentral system to receive calls on selected mobiles. Client calls should be dealt with but we may be a little terse with incoming cold sales calls today.

Support Email

We will forward Support to a temporary mail box which will be monitored. So, you may receive an error message from our office server but the support email will get to the team. Some will be working at home.

Timecales

SSEN are working on it and will keep us updated. The local socials are going bonkers. Lights flickering occasionally everywhere.

Prevention

Hopefully, the problem will only last a few hours. Although we have large UPS storage, we will be looking for bigger reserve supplies for the office.

NACFB conference at the NEC

Rick Marengo

On 30th September, a team of us from AXLR8 went to our first trade show since lockdown. It was very professionally organised and run.

Great to meet up with so many clients and other potential technical and business collaborators.

The resilient commercial finance market is alive and kicking!

To learn more about how AXLR8 help your finance broker find more clients and process proposals quickly and easily, please contact us at 01344 776500 or send us an email.