Lynbrook were proud to be the main sponsor of the fourth annual dance competition and gala fundraiser, Strictly Nugent 2019, which took place at the iconic Anfield Stadium, Liverpool on Saturday 2 November.

The event was a resounding success with the 12 dancers and their professional partners receiving standing ovations from the 200 guests with 3 couples getting perfect 10’s from the judges!

The atmosphere was electric from the start, as the dancers gave their all to compete for the winner’s trophies.

The Judges trophy went to Klare Rufo who danced the American Smooth with James Wilson. Klare is the Lead for The Archdiocese of Liverpool Primary School Improvement Trust.

Vicky Komrower, Dancing the tango with Anton Du Cooke was the Audience winner Vicky a first-time dancer, is a consultant in acute medicine at Liverpool Royal Hospital.

The audience were buzzing from the moment the first dance started, and they continued cheering and waving banners throughout.

Normandie Wragg Nugent’s CEO said:

“What an amazing night, celebrating dance whilst supporting our children’s services, we are so grateful to all our guests for their support and the dancers who worked so hard!  The support we receive helps us go the extra mile for those in our care to help them reach their full potential.”

The picture features our sponsors, Lynbroook and thier guests, our fabulous hosts, Natalie Flynn and David Wafer, our judges, The Right Worshipful, The Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Councillor Anna Rothery, Head Judge Carolene Hinds, Jane Caven and Javier Franco Leonard and Nugent CEO, Normandie Wragg. (photo by AB Photography)

Lynbrook was the main sponsor for the  fourth year running and our director, Ian Morgan said:

“Every year we are overwhelmed by the hard work the dancer’s put in and are very proud to be part of this excellent evening. We didn’t hesitate to come back this year to support such an important charity.”

Funds raised will help to support our children’s services, Clumber Care, St Catherine’s Secure Centre, Nugent House School and Nugent House Residential.

Cloud document management means more than just archiving and managing documents electronically. It’s a system that enables a dispersed workforce to connect with the office or one another, whilst taking part in the day to day activities of the business.

With the cloud, updates are no longer difficult or expensive and can solve the below five pain points often experienced by businesses today.

1.   Mobile

Cloud solutions are about availability, anytime and anywhere.  Devices, operating systems and physical location are irrelevant to staff getting work done. Key tasks like capturing, routing and approving documents can all be available.

2.   Productivity

With cloud document management set-up is quick, short and reduced downtime enables workers to manage documents and take part in digital workflows with minimal business disruption.

3.   Agility

Adding new users, setting up new workflows and including additional services can be handled instantly with simple licensing terms.

4.   Scalability

Working in the cloud can be key for businesses that value scalability. By leveraging robust infrastructure backbones like Microsoft Azure, near-infinite storage and computing power are instantly available.

5.   Control

Security is always a priority. Cloud document management systems take advantage of active, comprehensive data centre security as well as detailed user profiles controlled from a single system.

 

If your business looking for a way to tackle any of the of the above, get in touch with us and we can talk through how our solutions can help.

Integrating a document management system into your existing software, such as an ERP, accounting package, payroll or HR makes sense.  Sharing information between the systems simplifies the way data flows through your business.  This in turn enhances communication across departments, increases productivity and eliminates duplicate data entry.

Integrating a document management system with other business software provides benefits that can’t be achieved when using standalone software.

Protection against misuse

Documents should be protected against unauthorised access by a comprehensive rights system.

Availability

Authorised employees only, should be able to access documents at any time via a web browser or mobile.

Automatic retention rules

Your solution should store documents then automatically delete them after a set period, defined by you.

Compliance

A document management system should enable your business to better meet privacy requirements, auditing standards and regulations such as HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley and GDPR.

It should also be flexible to meet your needs and provide the integration needed to improve your processes.

Seamless exchanges of integration between systems

Our Document Management System works with diverse data sources: a standalone database, a proprietary  database, or even a simple CSV file. The solution also exchanges data via a Platform Service which bundles all access to the system from external applications and devices.

If your ERP system exports all invoices, credit notes and other documents as a PDF, you can automatically store these in the application.

Integrating a document management system with any existing business software should serve to enhance its features.  Talk to us about how your business is operating and what you’d like to achieve and we can tell you how we will help.

HR automation can be just as important for small businesses as it can for larger ones.  If you’re a small business, it’s likely that your HR team consists of no more than two people.  Their daily tasks probably span across the business into office management, administration and payroll, which is why HR automation can be even more vital for small businesses.

HR often has fewer resources and smaller budgets and so automation can increase productivity, having a positive knock on effect on moral.  Automated business processes can reduce human error and free up staff to provide more value-added work.

HR automation enables HR departments to digitise and centralise the HR records of every employee. This includes their CV, onboarding forms, tax documents, training schedules, performance reviews and any grievance issues. This gives HR professionals more time to focus on what matters most – hiring talented people, effective onboarding, and measuring and improving employee satisfaction.

How HR Automation for Small Businesses Digitises Key Processes

Applicant Tracking

• Manages communication between HR, the hiring manager and the applicant
• Provides email notifications of next steps throughout the hiring process to both the applicant, line managers and HR.

Onboarding

• Provides web forms that pre-fill the new hire’s basic details, so new employees only have to provide this information once
• Manages new hire provisioning so employees have all the equipment they need to begin working on their first day

Performance Management

• Digitises the employee review process, automates appraisal reminders, confirms review completion and sets dates for the next review
• Automates appraisal sign-off and archiving

Holiday Requests

• Routes holiday requests to the manager via web form submission
• Emails updates to employee on decision
• Provides updates to accrued employee allowances

Exit Process

• Starts the exit process by emailing instructions for scheduling an exit interview, returning company property and other tasks the employee must complete
• Syncs employee documents with updated status
• Sets record retention dates in the document management system

For a free, no obligation, 20 minute demo on how HR automation can help your small business, contact us and we’ll arrange a time to suit you.

Whether it’s changing your customer service processes, adopting a new CRM or completely altering your product offering.  Business change means moving your company from where it is now to where you want it to be.

Any form of change is likely to affect your daily operations.  In the short term it may slow productivity, but it is the long term change that’s important to keep in mind.  You’ve identified a part of the business that isn’t working as effectively as it should.  Whether it’s costing you money, affecting staff moral or creating a business risk, the start of a new year feels like a good time to make the change happen.

A major part of any business change is to talk to those being affected.  Understanding their frustrations, listening to their views and getting their buy in will make any transition easier.  If staff aren’t on board, the changes are likely to fail, costing time and money.

Tips on Business Change

1. Demonstrate the importance of the change you’re trying to make. It could be giving customer feedback to your team, showing how they’ve been disappointed with service.  Providing evidence the impact of lost invoices has had.  Or give a break down of costs to show that too much money is being spent in a particular area.
2. Appoint someone to lead the changes.  Having a trusted member of staff who can lead by example and who others can approach with fears or questions will be valuable.
3. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Do this early and often.  Employees who feel left in the dark and don’t understand the benefits to them could cause barriers.
4. Celebrate the progress you make and acknowledge the wins to prove the change is working.
5. Monitor the effort and the results of business change and make any adjustments where needed. Let staff know the positive impact the change is having on the business, and get feedback from those involved.

Business change won’t happen overnight, but don’t lose sight of why you’re doing it, long term gains will outweigh any short term problems.

If you’re looking to change the way you store and access documents, improve your accounts payable process or need a better way to manage your emails, speak to us and understand how we can help.

Data compliance regulations are the law, but laws can take a lot of understanding.  Changes in the law can mean an overhaul of processes that companies have used to manage their data for years. Even under new or well-established law, companies may be struggling to comply.

Instead of continuing to risk slower processes, data loss, major fines and angry customers, companies need to harness technology to aid in data compliance.

With data management, there is no room for error because your customers will not accept it. Businesses that are compliant stand out from the crowd — and what business doesn’t want that?  Compliance requires that data is managed, stored and accessed more securely.  A side effect of this is better-organised data, which when accessed, means a better employee and customer experience.

With technology in place to help businesses reach compliance benchmarks; growth, expansion and brand reputation are all positive side effects.

Reviewing Data Compliance

When reviewing data compliance solutions, business leaders should be thinking about how their data is:

• Collected and stored.
• Accessed and used.
• Deleted and “forgotten.” and
• Provided to users with bespoke permissions.

If answers to any of these mean your company does not meet compliance regulations such as GDRP, you need to act now.   Working with the right technology to drive compliance quickly and easily means that your business benefits in many other ways to:

• Enhanced data security, company-wide.
• Increased staff productivity. Data stored correctly means less searching and less confusion.
• Meet and comply with customer data requests efficiently.
• Enjoy greater customer trust, positive word-of-mouth and a increased brand reputation.

The bottom line for all of us is that our businesses are being held to new and higher standards, so ensuring your data compliance efforts are up to par is critical.

HR digital transformation is the process of moving manual, paper based processes to automated digital ones.  If people and process are the keys to success in business, it’s more important than ever for organisations to focus on HR digital transformation.

To begin with you need to establish clear goals – what is it you’re trying to achieve? Do you want to improve your recruitment processes? Do you need a more secure way to store and access your employee information?  Your HR department may decide it wants to start off by simply storing documents digitally.  It could then move on to using digital forms, and then onto workflow approval, retention and deletion procedures.

Tips for HR Digital Transformation

1. Talk to your employees, find out how they’d like to benefit from HR digital transformation. It could be that having access to their employee records themselves, rather than having to go through HR, could save everyone time.
2. Think about the most repetitive and time consuming tasks and how you could improve them. Digitisation means the team can refocus on other areas for improvement.
3. If you’re a small firm and your employee numbers are starting to grow, filing in chronological order could be helpful. It’ll make it easier to know, and find documents when the retention rules are up.
4. When scanning documents to be filed electronically, check if they’re double sided. Learning this after they’re scanned and destroyed would be a terrible thing.
5. Large documents such as manuals or the Employee Handbook could be kept on an intranet, saving paper and allowing easier access for staff.

All HR processes require documentation, and if this documentation is becoming overwhelming, then it’s time to make a change.  A document management system is designed and built to deal with these documents, in a way you choose.

A well-designed system will reduce errors and manual administration tasks in your HR department, freeing up valuable time so that staff can focus on business strategies and goals.

Managing documents in construction can be a huge task.  With various factors at play, including the volume of documents needed to run a project, multiple sites all needing access to the same information, as well as difficulties finding documentation.

Often when working out in the field, project managers will have physical copies of documentation.  This could mean duplication, problems with version control if there is more than one copy and simply the burden of having paper in a busy outdoor environment.

When managing documents in construction, businesses need to think about centralising all their data to address some of the issues above.   From Lynbrook’s experience, one project in construction could require more than 20 documents, not to mention any drafts, revisions or change requests.  Information on tenders, pre-construction agreements, contracts, CAD drawings, Record Photographs, Operating Manuals as well as many more, could be required by numerous people at the same time.

Centralising Documents gives More Control.

If your business has various office locations, each office may have a slightly different way of handling, saving and accessing information.  This can cause confusion, which may lead to mistakes.  Giving everyone access to the same information via a well implemented document management system will eradicate these problems.

Centralised documents can be accessed anywhere, with web based software and the cloud.  Employees out in the field can use tablets or phones to view and update information.  Our Document Management Systems provide full version control so everyone knows they’re working from the latest document.   It works by capturing, indexing and storing all documents in a way that can replicate your existing processes.

Compliance within the construction industry means securely retaining documents relating to the health and safety of workers, the effectiveness of building materials and the legality of construction contracts.

Digital transformation isn’t just a buzzword, and it’s not just something you tell your IT department to handle, it’s more importantly about business transformation.

Currently, around 75% of manufacturers still rely on manual data collection opposed to electronic record keeping. While it may seem cheaper to manually use paper processes, it is not efficient and leaves room for error. When data collection is not done properly, records can be lost or misplaced, making it difficult to retrieve information.  Ultimately this may result in costly delays, lost business opportunities, and frustrated employees.