Video: Enable’s Denys Shortt hosts Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
Build It BetterMarch 8, 2011
As a leader in developing retrospective rebate and overrider management systems, Enable is delighted to be exhibiting at eWorld Purchasing & Supply.
The event focuses on leading-edge technologies and techniques within the procurement and supply chain functions. Come and join us on 2 March at Stand 3 where we can discuss how we design, develop and implement finely tuned solutions for customers across many industries.
You will also have the opportunity to hear how Andrew Butt, Managing Director, has overseen the requirements analysis and implementation of supplier contract management systems to a range of companies and buying groups, offering benefits such as revenue optimisation, cost reduction, risk management and cash release.
Our efficient systems have made the difference between just "making do" and making profit!
The NEC Group is the Birmingham-based venue management company that operates four world-class venues: The National Exhibition Centre, The International Convention Centre, the LG Arena and The National Indoor Arena. The Group also operates national ticketing agency The Ticket Factory and award-winning, prestige caterer Amadeus.
Together, the venues stage more than 800 events a year, from world-renowned consumer and trade exhibitions like Clothes Show Live and Crufts, to concerts by international artists including Pink, Elton John and Michael Buble.
A substantial part of NEC Group business involves the provision of Catering Services, both in a retail context at NEC exhibitions and as a contracted service to an end client via its own premium event catering company—Amadeus.
What was the issue?
The staffing of Catering Services is a substantial exercise, involving hundreds of staff and a mixture of full-time employees, annualised and non-annualised part-time employees, casual workers, students and agency staff.
The NEC Group spends £12m annually on catering labour, with each individual event having particular staffing requirements, and where last minute changes to plan are common. The Government’s Working Time Directive rules add further complexity where legal restrictions exist on the working schedule for staff.
Need, the mother of invention
Whether through business acquisition, merger or demerger, significant restructuring of any organisation presents opportunities to reinvigorate process and champion best practice. What’s more, if implemented correctly, considerable time and cost efficiencies can be achieved.
Here, Bruce Gardner for NSL recalls how need really was the mother of invention for the business. In addition, he explains how the system that was developed has gone on to provide a platform for continued cost-savings across new NSL contracts.
Business critical situation
NSL is one of the biggest transport services businesses in the UK. The company is the largest provider of on-street parking management services in the country, working with over 40 local authorities and two government agencies as customers. The business also provides a range of transport and related services to public and private clients, such as debt recovery, CCTV monitoring, coach and patient transfer operations, notice processing and street design consultancy.
Although launched as a brand in 2009, NSL‘s history goes back more than 75 years, originally as part of National Car Parks (NCP). Rapid growth and significant change in the new decade saw it demerge from NCP to NSL Services in 2007.
At that time, the company faced one of its biggest challenges to date. The solution to which ultimately led to its back office processes being revolutionised, providing immediate cost savings.
So, feeling as hungry as ever and to mark our 10th anniversary we recently carried out a survey of our many clients, old and new, to gauge their thoughts on all aspects of our business.
We sought their views as to the standard of service we set in the following areas:
Enable are pleased to announce that we will, once again, be attending the highly successful FD Networking Forum organised by UK based events company, Richmond Events. The three day forum will take place later this year (13 -16 October) aboard the P&O flagship vessel, Arcadia.
Having attended previous events organised by Richmond, we look forward to three continuous days of valuable networking and pre-arranged business meetings with Finance Directors and CFO’s from some of Europe’s leading companies.
We have previously attended both IT Director and Finance Director-focussed events and found that the one-to-one networking / speed meeting format to be a highly effective platform for conveying the Enable message. It would take a great deal of time to generate such an audience through ‘cold calling’ and more conventional lead generation means.
Enable specialises in the development of browser based business systems, often to replace legacy applications, Excel spreadsheets and Access databases that have become business critical. The c. 40 meetings over the course of three days not only gives us plenty of opportunity to perfect our pitch but also provides valuable insight into the problems that our prospective clients are currently facing in their day to day business.
XLVets, one of the UK’s leading veterinary groups, has created improved purchasing insight and business process efficiencies, thanks to a new, bespoke purchasing information system. Whilst tailored to meet XLVets’ specific needs the underlying efficiencies would apply for a spectrum of sectors from pharmacies to agro-chemical suppliers.
The solution, which was devised and implemented by software specialist Enable, was part of an initiative to provide accurate and timely purchasing, pricing and rebate earnings information to member practices, eliminating the need for each practice to calculate the same information.