Category: News

Today is the launch day of I Love Goole, Goole’s local reward card. ITexpress have been involved right from the beginning when the working group got together towards the end of November. Since then we have managed to design the logo, come up with the name, and then provide a website capable of hosting all the offers and scaling up in the future.

Deadlines are always important to clients, and in our experience, they are often missed. As we chose the 14th February for this launch to coincide with Valentines Day, the deadline wasn’t really able to slip, and we are grateful for the efforts of many business people around the town who managed to get the information to us in time.

Interestingly, the launch of a website isn’t even the end of the work, in many woays it is just the beginning. We now have to focus on adding content as quickly as possible and working on the search engine optimisation and promotion of the site.

EastTrans are celebrating a new website launch and now have the ability to add their own news items to the website. EastTrans are based in Stallingbrough, near Grimsby and specialise in transporting goods across the country. They are probably the largest provider of curtain sided transport movements on the south bank of the River Humber.

EastTrans came to ITexpress as their old website was based in flash and it was unable to be edited easily. We converted the old website so it would be html based and we also setup a news section so East Trans could add content as they wished. As it happened, they took advantage of our content adding service and now it is simply a case of letting us know the latest news and we edit their site for them, simply and quickly.

If you are interested in learning more about how we can improve the web presence of your business then please call us on 01405 765782 or contact us

The I Love Goole! initiative is getting closer to the launch date of Valentines Day, and now is the time to get involved if you haven’t already. ITexpress are donating the website for the venture and we have a holding page up at http://ilovegoole.co.uk where you can enter your email address and get updates as they occur.

If you are a Goole Shopper then make sure you find some time on Tuesday to visit the town and get your card from the I Love Goole! tent which will be located on Boothferry Road. If you are a local business and haven’t yet signed up for the scheme then make sure you contact us as soon as possible, so we can get you up and running and your details entered on the website.

The I Love Goole initiative is a great way of building solid local loyalty and we are extremely proud and excited to be a part of it.

Social Media is here to stay, and by that I mean that your employees, as well as your customers, are spending more time on social media sites every day. Businesses find this trend alarming, as not only do customers respond less predictably to marketing efforts, but there is a fear of reduced productivity from employees.

The truth is that even when you restrict access to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter etc. your employees are simply accessing these sites from their mobile phones, and therefore disappearing on more toilet breaks, cigarette breaks, or pointless journeys across the office to do so.

So what can a business do to make the most out of rmployees’ social media habits?;

• Appoint some employees to champion a social media initiative
• Make social media a central part of your marketing mix
• encourage employees to post on the facebook page and to answer queries
• Encourage employees to search for your business name on Twitter and respond to queries
• Accept that social media is here to stay and by being open about it is better than pretending it doesn’t exist
• Set social media challenges for employees, such as a number of likes or tweets about the business

It can be difficult to traverse this new movement into social media but you might find you already have plenty of experts on board in your own team. Why not be brave and embrace social media within your organisation?

Another week, another website goes live, this time it is Danbrit Shipping who have chosen an ITexpress website. This was a very exciting project for ITexpress as Danbrit are a very popular business within Goole and have in many ways influenced the development of Goole over the last few decades.

Danbrit wanted to be able to edit their website themselves and also begin to explore social networking through twitter and linkedin, so we created their website with this ibn mind. It is based on a Wordpres platform and so can be edited easily and functionality can be added through the use of plugins.

Danbrit are a shipping company and so the use of the anchore and water graphic nicely adds to the look and feel we think.

Using IT to help your business is not a one off cost. As time goes by, new updates and patches are released, hardware becomes outdated, and your IT equipment will become slower and perhaps no longer fulfill the needs of the day.

It’s worthwhile thinking about this as a technology tax, and it only gets more expensive the longer you leave your equipment between upgrades and new investments.

What happens when you ignore the tax and try to get more life out of your IT equipment?

• The equipment becomes slower to use
• The equipment becomes unstable and starts crashing
• New software releases supercede old releases and provide no upgrade path
• Old hardware becomes end of line and replacements no longer available

The trouble is that all of these things happen usually at once and by then it is too late, and the necessary upgrade may need to be performed across multiple versions, which might mean data may not be transferred and may even be lost.

Make sure you are aware of technology tax, and muddling through with old technology may not be saving you money at all. Upgrading regularly can be cheaper in many cases, and you should discuss a reasonable upgrade cycle with your IT support provider.

Many small businesses underestimate just how much work and time is taken up by processing their own payroll. By the time you have employed more than a few people the payroll function is already starting to get complicated and you might find you are spending time away from customers and your core business. In our view, there are many benefits to outsourcing your payroll.

• 1. Avoid HMRC Penalties. The HMRC aren’t the forgiving type, so if you have made errors in your payroll calculation, no matter how innocent, they will charge you, and probably implement a penalty.
• 2. Reduce Costs. Maintaining your own payroll software and ensuring proper training for the person responsible for processing it can be very costly. By outsourcing you will only be charged a small amount per employee, which will easily reduce those costs.
• 3. Pay Employees directly. Outsourced Payroll Companies may also offer a bacs payment service which will enable you to pay employees automatically and not wait 3 days for bank clearing
• 4. Alleviate Pain. Why worry about what is really a distraction from your core business. Worrying about whether the office runs smoothly on payroll day should not be your concern
• 5. Free up Valuable resources. Payroll processing takes time, and this time might be better spent on customers or other more essential and important tasks.
• 6. Avoid Technology Headaches. Payroll software is upgraded and updated regularly, and when you add in the requirement to transmit information to HMRC over the internet, technology problems can cost whole days of nonproductive time
• 7. Benefit from outside payroll expertise. Many times complications will occur particularly with sick pay, attachements of earnings, or other adjustments. Rather than having to research and find the answers yourself, you just let the outsourced service look after it.
• 8. Don’t lose payroll knowledge out the door. If your bookkeeper or payroll clerk leave, or go on maternity leave, or even on holiday, you have to find a replacement. Not with an outsourced service

All in all we often wonder why a business should run their payroll at all, there are just so many benefits to outsourcing what is really a completely non-productive part of running business. Outsourced companies run payrolls all day, every day, and can handle the job so much more efficiently that the cost savings alone will warrant the change, never mind the ability to free your staff to focus on the real important goals you have set for your business

Its amazing how fast time goes by, and it only seems like yesterday when ITexpress opened its doors, although it was over 12 years ago now. One of our favourite customers, Anila Vaghela, is celebrating her 20th year in business this year, and we wish her all the best for what must be an exciting time.

Anila approached ITexpress to redesign her website after talking to one of our other customers. Being based down in Surrey means that there are very few opportunities for face to face meetings, and so most of the time the project was conducted via telephone and using a private webspace to review the latest changes.

Anila sells curry sauces which taste amazing and are free of any artificial flavours or additives, and not only are they all vegetarian friendly, but also Gluten Free. We felt the website design should portray this freshness and cleanness and we think we cracked it!

Congrats to Anilas Sauces on reaching their 20th year, and we look forward to celebrating your silver jubilee very soon.

‘It’s inevitable Mr Anderson’ says Smith from The Matrix, and the upcoming release of another version of Windows is also inevitable. Upgrades are usually a time for frustration for the IT departments and existing users, but alsways exciting for the new user or when you sensibly buy a new PC to run the new operating system on.

We at ITexpress are looking forward to Windows 8, especially with regard to its tablet capabilities, and PC Advisor recently posted an article highlighting 14 things to look forward to. See the list below.

• Metro Interface
• Fast BootUp
• Reset and Refresh
• Windows To Go
• Windows Store
• Ribbon Interface
• WiFi Direct Support
• NFC Support
• Native ISO Image Support
• Side By Side Apps on Tablets
• ARM Processor Support
• Windows Live SkyDrive Integration
• Hyper V
• Beefed Up Task Manager

Some of the reasons are a bit geeky what with Hyper V virtualisaion and ARM processor support, never mind Native ISO Image Support. Most people won’t care about such things, but the stand outs for us are really the reset and refresh which will make it much easier to reset machines after suffering from file corruptions, and of course the faster boot times.

Are you looking forward to Windows 8?