Blown Away by Bentley

Sales manager Joe Jardine blogs about his trip to Bentley Motor Cars.

This month I attended a South Cheshire Chamber business networking event at Bentley Motor Cars. I got to meet plenty of business owners and influential people but the reason for this blog article is to tell you about the inspirational Bentley factory tour.

The event included a fascinating half hour presentation about the history of the luxury automotive manufacturer and how it continues to evolve, adapting to the latest challenges whilst still delivering their vision of developing and crafting the World’s most desirable high performance cars. This was followed by a two hour tour of their Crewe site. Unlike many other car manufacturers, Bentley design, build and sell cars from the single site, in a huge all in one operation.

Despite living less than 10 miles from the factory and having driven past it hundreds of times, I’d never set foot through the big fancy glass doors. The first thing that struck me was how spotlessly clean the entire site was. I was in a group of ten and at the beginning of the tour we were invited to stop any worker along our route and have a chat. Each individual we spoke to was extremely passionate and had a story or two to tell. These ranged from how their role has changed over the years to keep up with the latest technology and the extensive training they’ve been on, to the lavish customisation requests that they have received from rich extrovert celebrities. Personalised ‘his and hers’ crystal champagne flutes in the arm rest anyone? Or what about a £5k child seat?

Bentley are part of the Volkswagen Group. In 2011 they sold over 7,000 vehicles with the new Continental GT accounting for approximately one third of them. This is a huge vamp up in production compared to a decade ago when they were making a little over 1,000 cars. During the past ten years to keep up with demand they have introduced lots of new lean practices and machine automation to ensure everything runs efficiently. They have a number of quarter million pound machines that are programmed with certain shapes that are required for the interior trim. It was fantastic to watch the machine review a piece of material, recognise the pre-marked blemishes and then make the cuts to maximise the utilisation. That said, they still employ around 4,000 people with many more jobs at key suppliers dependent on Bentley.

Some interesting facts:-

• Subject to the amount of leather, it takes a highly skilled person between 5 and 8 hours to handstich each steering wheel.
• Bentley are expecting big things for their next car as they are entering the SUV market. Their concept car received the most amount of press interest at the recent Geneva show.
• Bentley is the jewel in the VW Group crown. The VW Group also includes Audi, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen.
• Rolls Royce who previously owned Bentley, chose to build the factory in Crewe because of the good railway links, the skilled workforce and for the cloud cover to help protect them from bombing raids! At that stage they were building aeroplane engines to help with the war efforts.
• Bentley have won the Le Mons 24 hour race six times, 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930 and more recently in 2003.
• Bentley source their veneers from Atlas customer, Nantwich Veneers! Visit them and see the work they do at www.nantwichveneers.com

  

Bentley run organised tours for members of the public. If you’re interested in cars, luxury or manufacturing in general then I certainly recommend you take a trip. Click here for further details.

Right I’m off to sell lots of systems to earn sufficient commission so that I can afford the Bentley Continental GT.

All Tied Up

Liam Meadows wore a tie. We realise that a man wearing a tie perhaps doesn’t seem news worthy to most people, but when Liam walked into the office with his tie on it certainly caused a few dropped jaws. Rumours quickly spread about a court case but the real special occasion and reason for the tie was because we had allowed Liam out of the developer’s dark cupboard to join the sales team in a customer facing meeting.

This got us thinking... why do we wear ties?

After all...

• They seem to be a magnet for any spilt breakfast / lunch.
• They regularly take a dip in our brews.
• They are the frequent cause of “are you colour blind? / did you get dressed in the dark?” comments/insults from our colleagues on the very rare occasion that the colours/patterns clash with our shirt.

Would you be offended if we attended a meeting and didn’t wear a tie? We’d love to hear your comments.

Planning on moving office soon, make sure you let your ISP know in advance!

Our technical team blog about the importance of good communication with your ISP.


Over the years we've frequently seen customers suffer unnecessary and often lengthy periods of downtime on their broadband service after moving office. This is always due to the customer not advising us of the office move in advance, as they assume that transferring the phone line will automatically take the ADSL service with it.


Unfortunately this is not how it works, and by the time we find out about the office move, the customer has no DSL service and its too late for us to do anything about it. At this stage we can only offer to fast track the new order, at an additional charge of £150 to keep the period of downtime to a minimum. If we are told in advance, then we will always recommend the same process to avoid any loss of service.


First of all you need to ensure that a new phone line is ordered to go live at least a week before the office move is set to take place. Ideally it would be ordered to go live two weeks prior to the move, in case of unexpected delays. Once the phone line goes live we can then order a new DSL service on the new number, you would then effectively have two DSL services running at both the old and new office for a week, so the move could be done at your own convenience during this period.


Our DSL accounts are not locked to individual lines, so you would not need to reconfigure your router/firewall etc, and could simply unplug from one office and plug into the new office. As I'm sure you'll agree, this is a stress free way of moving your broadband to the new office, which is good, as office moves are often stressful enough as it is!


If you currently get your broadband through Atlas/C2 Internet, and have an office move planned for one of your sites, then please give our TSM team a call on 0333 666 3330 for further advice.

Milestone for Gary

Everyone at Atlas would like pass on our very best wishes to company director Gary Manktelow, who turned fifty during the course of this month. You're never too old for balloons!

Planning for the London Olympics

Craig Cameron blogs about the invisible technology layers we don’t see behind the Olympic games, how these layers might have been compromised in recent weeks and how better planning when it comes to employees could have worked wonders.

It is not the purpose of this blog to be controversial or highly opinionated but given the London Olympics is starting this week, and it is the biggest single sporting event that any of us are likely to witness in our lifetime, we had to include it somewhere.

If our purpose behind these articles is to be informative then what does a once in a lifetime event like London 2012 have to teach Atlas customers at large?
The company G4S has been in the news a great deal recently but we’re not going to focus on how or why they have allegedly failed to carry out their “believed to be” contractual duties. That is being covered elsewhere and we would have very little to add.

What we do want to highlight are the very real operational difficulties involved in getting 10,000 people from not-employed over to employed, trained, on-site, supervised and ready to go. Not only do we know about that but we are experts.

For example:-

• One of our customers carries out work on power stations, including nuclear ones. They have to recruit as many as 500 highly qualified people, each of whom has very high security clearance. This has to be done in around a two week period. How do they manage this? They use the Atlas HR Hub.

• Every February, and within a three week period, another one of our customers has to recruit nearly 500 seasonal staff, suitably qualified to work with children and vulnerable adults. How do they manage this? They use QlikView Business Discovery.

• One of our customers has 10,000 employees who have to be scheduled into, each week, nearly 900 different locations. It is a legal requirement for them to have minimum numbers of suitably qualified staff at each location before they can legally open the shop. A repeated failure to comply would result in a removal of the very licence our customer needs to operate their business; it can be that serious. How do they manage this? They use the Atlas Employee Roster Software, and frankly they would not have the operation they have without it!

• Another one of our customers who are in the food processing industry have to ensure that no-one (employees and visitors) who has been on a foreign holiday in the last three days enters their factory.

Then of course apart from employing hundreds or thousands of people you have to ensure they actually turned up for work. We have solutions for that also, including options that are activated by phone calls or smart phones messages i.e. no computer necessary.

Sadly none of this Atlas software or technology is in use at London 2012, but even without our super clever stuff, we are still confident the Games will be a success.
We know this will be difficult, but for a moment let us forget the London 2012 Olympics are happening this week.

Please ask yourself this question, how big a difference to the labour management in your organisation would some of this super-clever Atlas staff make?

Armed Forces Day is extra-special for Adam’s son (and new daughter-in-law!)

You may know Adam Wilkinson, TSM engineer at our Leeds office. His son, Thomas, was married on Saturday to Stephanie at a service & reception in Wetherby, north of Leeds.

What made the day extra-special is that Thomas is in the army and a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and Saturday 30th June 2012 was Armed Forces Day.

Thomas wore his full military dress uniform for the service and displayed his medals proudly. A joyous occasion for all concerned and all of us at Atlas wish Thomas and Stephanie our warmest wishes for the future.

Compilation: Well Wishes for Joe

Sales Manager Joe Jardine collates all of the 'well wishes' he's recently received from colleagues...

As plenty of you will be aware, I recently broke my collar bone. I'm lucky enough to have a bunch of supportive and sympathetic colleagues who have been chauffeuring me around to meetings and making my brews. They've also been finding their own ways to wish me well over the past fortnight...

'Sorry to hear about your injury, but why the chip on your shoulder?'

'Welcome back to work, I hear you had a cracking few days holiday.'

'I heard you broke your arm in 2 places, I would avoid those 2 places in future.'

'A man walked into a bar. He now has a broken collar bone.'

'It couldn't have happened to a nicer chap. You're armless.'

'If you think I’m going to make you a cuppa you can ‘sling’ your hook.'

'You're armless for a change... you're usually legless'

My Learning Experience With The Institute of Directors

Recently Atlas Director Craig Cameron went through the first stage of the Institute of Directors learning and development programme. Just in case you are the only person on the planet he has not told, he got the best possible mark, a Pass with Distinction. Here his report.

As you can imagine the Institute of Directors (IoD) has strong opinions as to what constitutes best practice when it come to running organisations of all shapes and sizes. Much of this is continuing from the recommendations contained in the various “independent reviews” set up by UK regulatory authorities to investigate and report on governance issues: Cadbury; Greenbury; Hampel ; Higgs ; and Smith. When you throw into the mix the well-publicised failing of risk management at RBS and their ilk in the years leading up to 2008 there is a substantial body of evidence to say that how well organisations are run is important and affects a much larger number of people than just those directly involved.

I know there are exceptions but many people become company directors because they excelled in their previous role. The significance of this? It is a totally different type of job.

For one, there are the contradictory forces of balancing short-term and long-term priorities. Second, the magnitude of the decisions are greater both in terms of the money involved and the duration. Third, the style of decision making is different. Hopefully, in a well-run operation all the information needed to make a robust decision is available. You might have to dig around a bit (shameless self-promotion – Atlas can provide you with award winning, market leading Business Intelligence software that will do just that) but my point is the information is available.

If you accept that strategic decisions involve complex judgements as to what the situation will be in 2 years time, then it becomes clear that information might be available but it won’t be what you are used to. Then include topics such as succession planning (only 15% of family businesses survive to third-generation), mergers and acquisitions (over 70% fail to create significant value)...and I could go on from there. As I said earlier, it is a different job.

The IoD is very much into learning and development and keen for their members to participate in their professional learning programme which has three levels of qualification; the Certificate in Company Direction, the Diploma in Company Direction, culminating in the Chartered Director programme. This very week I have completed the Certificate Examination, after taking part in a 6 day intensive “boot-camp” in February.

My thoughts about my recent experiences would be as follows. The 6 day “boot-camp” was tough going, especially by the time you reach the last couple of days. When I say this I don’t think that my brain is defective in anyway, but there was just too much information to absorb in the time available. Each of us left with in excess of 1,000 pages of Course Notes plus the cautionary tale that Exam questions could come from anywhere within that. Having just sat the Exam I can confirm that was good advice.

There are three exams per year, and laden down with over 1,000 pages of essential reading material, I thought that the March Exam would be too soon, so I went for June. To help me there was an excellent e-learning portal on the IoD web-site and I made sure that I found time to fully revise, every weekend, bank holiday and two weeks of holidays to be exact, and I was glad that I did.

The actual format of the Certificate Exam is 48 multiple choice questions in three hours with a pass mark of 50%, which does not sound like a lot, but wait and see the questions!
What is the biggest single thing that I have gained so far? An improved ability to manage complex decisions, largely due to having a better framework. That benefits me not just as a Director of Atlas but it also enables me to deliver greater insights to our customers when in conversation with their senior management teams about their company plans and ambitions.

The IoD is not just about learning and exams. Membership brings many benefits both on a personal and business level. The IoD does make available to its members many excellent resources and I would wholeheartedly recommend membership. There is a minimum criteria in terms of personal experience and size of organisation plus you have to be proposed by an existing IoD member.

If this is something that might suit you then please drop me an email craig.cameron@atlasbiz.com and I will be happy to discuss in more detail.

Craig Cameron, MIoD

Education, Education, Education

Ruth Doe from our Customer Sales & Support department blogs about being a first-time learner of Access Accounts.

 Having recently taken on some responsibility in the accounts department here at Atlas, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that using Access Accounting software was so much easier to use than the accounting solutions I have dealt with in a previous life.

After attending the same training Atlas provide to our customers – delivered by Keltha Borey, one of our trainers and experts in Access and ProspectSoft - all became crystal clear in no time. Keltha has the skill and wit of talking on every level from the very high end accounting functionality to the simple features that make users’ lives easier - and a good job too in my novice case! Keltha managed to take the usual “fear of the unknown” away very quickly and succinctly and at a pace I could cope with.

Training is imperative if you are to get the most out of your software and your investment. As some customers will be aware I have worked in the Customer Services department here at Atlas for sometime and often talk to users with hand-me-down training, rather than those who have been on an official Atlas course. So, if you’re in the same boat as I was, talk to us about having an Atlas trainer come to your offices and show you the quick and easy way to use the software properly!

Functional Features: Accruals and Pre-Payments

Atlas Director, Diane Lonsdale, blogs about finding out just how useful the Access Accruals & Pre-Payments feature is.

Amongst my many external commitments with clients, I have been tasked this year with working out the value of Atlas’ own deferred income for our annual audit. If, like Atlas, you raise invoices for work and services which span several periods then you will be interested to learn that there is new functionality in Dimensions 2.50e to make accruals and pre-payments automatically over a series of dates.

Sales and Purchase Analysis codes can be configured so when used on a detail line in SOP, POP, PL and SL there are additional fields to complete to allow the software to automatically post a nominal journal to reverse out the revenue or costs from the PL and post to an account in the balance sheet. Recurring journals are then automatically created to release the revenue/costs from the balance sheet to the P&L.

This, we have seen in practice, results in more accurate monthly management accounts and less work at the end of the year to work out any deferred income or costs – and less work at the end of the year is a very good thing indeed!

If you would like more information about how to use this functionality then please contact us on 0333 666 3330.