Partner Article

Advanced Halo Awards: celebrating customer success

Advanced Halo Awards announced for best practice in the industry

6 November 2015 – Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced) has announced seven customer winners at this year’s prestigious Advanced Halo Awards. The winners of the 2015 awards were announced at the company’s annual Advanced World Customer Conference which took place yesterday at the Business Design Centre in London.

Now in its fourth year, the annual awards programme for customers is designed to recognise best practice and achievement amongst organisations using its specialist finance, HR, payroll, ticketing, fundraising and membership CRM software.

The seven winners announced at the recent awards ceremony were: • Street League, Outstanding Team of the Year • Bidvest Foodservice & Bidvest Logistics, Outstanding Contribution To Charity • Skipton Group, Advanced Green Award • Leicester Tigers Rugby Club, Best Use of Social Media • Dragon School, Greatest Savings through Software • Nottingham Students’ Union, Most Innovative Use of Software • Beating Bowel Cancer, Greatest Impact on Customer and Supporter Engagement

“For the fourth consecutive year, we are recognising the achievements of our long-standing and loyal customers through the Advanced Halo Awards. These awards provide a significant opportunity for our customers to demonstrate their commitment to technology and the successful results they are achieving through their use of our innovative technology,” said Simon Fowler, Managing Director of Advanced Business Solutions (Commercial division).

BACK OFFICE SOLUTIONS

Street League Using Advanced Exchequer, the small team of three people manage the entire accounting process of a £4.6m turnover charity which is split across 13 regions sub-divided into 22 teams across England and Scotland.

“At Street League we have a small finance team managing the entire accounting process for 13 regions across England and Scotland. The reporting and analytical functions of Exchequer have enabled us to produce ‘Income & Expenditure’ reports for each region at a team level. This enables Operations Managers to take ownership of their regional expenditure and make decisions based on accurate information,” commented Lesley Caron, Finance Director, Street League.

Bidvest Food Service & Bidvest Logistics Bidvest, an Advanced Business Solutions OpenAccounts customer, has a procurement team of six people who in the last seven years has raised and donated an incredible £185,000 to its chosen charities.

“Bidvest is delighted to receive this award. The hard work that goes into raising funds for Hospitality Action is a credit to our suppliers, including Advanced Business Solutions who have continuously supported our event. We have nominated Hospitality Action to receive the kind donation from Advanced Business Solutions and this will go a long way in helping people who work, or have worked in the hospitality industry in the UK that find themselves in crisis,” commented, Lorna Willetts, Non-Inventory and Product Co-ordinator.

Skipton Group Using OpenHR Workflow from Advanced Business Solutions, Skipton has automated its HR processes making them all paperless. Employees can now interact with HR online not only speeding up the processes and making service delivery more efficient, but eliminating a lengthy paper trail.

“At Skipton Building Society, we have saved hundreds of man hours every month by automating HR tasks with Advanced’s OpenHR solution. OpenHR has been a key part of our HR strategy to support more staff to save for retirement and since implementing the software the number of staff enrolled in our pension scheme has risen by more than 10%. We are delighted to be recognised for our commitment to our staff by receiving this Halo Award,” comments Jonathon McNaughton, HR Systems and MI Manager, Skipton Group.

Nottingham Students’ Union An Advanced Exchequer customer, Nottingham SU has recently created a bespoke Student Expense Application (eXpense365) which integrates into Exchequer to enable club and society organisers to electronically submit expense claims using their smartphone or tablet for 24 hour approval. The application reduces the time and cost to process expense claims by 15%, eliminates queries and delays incurred with the previous paper based process and gives event organisers control of their club or society.

“We implemented Advanced Exchequer to not only streamline the management of our finances but also to automate the processing of 20,000 student expense claims per year both of which have transformed the efficiency of our organisation. Working closely with the Advanced team to create the bespoke student expenses app we have significantly saved time and money for the Student Union. We are delighted to be recognised for this with our Halo Award,” commented Maria Brown, Finance Manager, Nottingham Students’ Union.

TICKETING SOLUTIONS Leicester Tigers Rugby Club Having successfully increased its online ticket sales from £400,000 to over £1 million using TALENT Sport from Advanced, Leicester Tigers Rugby Club, an Advanced Ticketing customer, turned to social media to enhance their fan engagement strategy and widen the channels of communication with its fans – Facebook and Twitter are the preferred channels where video shares are very popular.

“Leicester Tigers and rugby are famed for their hospitality, and we’ve worked hard to provide a digital version of our ethos and it’s great to be recognised for that effort. We’ve worked with Advanced Business Solutions for over a decade and they have constantly adapted to keep up with the needs of Leicester Tigers, other clubs and our supporters,” commented Chris Rose, Head of Brand, Leicester Tiger Rugby Club.

Dragon School An Advanced Ticketing Cloud Venue customer, Dragon School has used the online ticketing kiosk to reduce the administration around the events they run by 50%. The online kiosk has also meant they can reach a wider audience of potential ticket purchasers increasing important revenues to this charity – a good example being a recent WW1 commemoration event which was attended by 450 people, double what they would have expected without the online facility.

“The development team has reduced the administration of external events by more than 50% using our new online ticketing solution from Advanced. With the appointment of the Development Database Officer, who handles all elements of setting up events and online registrations, we are now able to organise many more alumni events and self-funding community events.”

“The system was launched in September and we successfully registered 95% of the 450 attendees for our WW1 commemoration and 170 registered for this year’s Father’s Breakfast online, 40% more than previous years. The development team is now testing a new online development which enables past and current parents and staff, as well as Old Dragons to update their own profiles, join industry groups and subscribe or unsubscribe to publications,” commented Jane Pendry, Head of Development, Dragon School.

NFP SOLUTIONS Beating Bowel Cancer The Institute of Fundraising Charity of the Year 2015 Award Winner recognises its 50% increase in fundraising a large part of which can be attributed to their ‘Decembeard Campaign’, where it successfully engaged with charity staff and volunteers to run a major digital campaign that started with analysing donor data to create digital personas of their donors which highlighted Instagram as the channel of choice for their newly identified ‘hipster’ persona.

“We are delighted to be an Advanced Halo Award winner. Our strategy is built on community and events fundraising with an emphasis on digital communications. The implementation of Donor Strategy has played a crucial role in our strategy by providing a better understanding of donors and how to engage with them. We have therefore been able to drive our fundraising strategy forward, resulting in a significant increase in our annual income,” commented Graham Kelly, Director of Fundraising, Beating Bowel Cancer.

-ENDS-

Notes to Editors:

About Advanced Business Solutions Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced) provides leading integrated business applications and services that enable public, private and third sector organisations to retain control, improve visibility and gain efficiencies whilst continually improving corporate performance. Advanced prides itself on getting close to its customers by understanding their businesses and responding to their evolving needs.

Advanced’s software systems comprise core accounting/financial management, procurement, supply chain management, human resource, payroll and customer relationship management systems. These systems are integrated with a range of collaborative, document management and business intelligence solutions to extend the value and effectiveness of front and back office departments.

Management information systems for school and academies are provided through Advanced’s subsidiaries, Advanced Learning and Compass Computer Consultants. Advanced also provides specialist vertical solutions for the not-for-profit, sports, arts, live events and legal markets. All solutions can be delivered as a managed or bureau service.

Customers are from both the public and private sectors and include Companies House, Newcastle City Council, NHSScotland, Norfolk Constabulary, Edge Hill University, WH Smith, Royal Bank of Scotland, Aer Lingus, National Express Group, DFS, Liverpool FC, Goodwood, CIPD and RSPB.

Advanced Business Solutions is a division of Advanced Computer Software Group Limited, a leading supplier of software and IT services to the health, care and business services sectors. In 2014, the Group won Tech Company of the Year in PwC’s UK Tech Awards. Advanced was also ranked in the Deloitte UK Fast 50, which recognises the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK and ranked in the top 300 technology companies in Deloitte’s EMEA rankings.

http://www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/abs/

Press Contacts: Angela Mycock and Ben Carey, Advanced Computer Software Group pr@advancedcomputersoftware.com +44(0)1625 856 513

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Advanced .