March Business Update
Hello everyone,
Because the first few months of the year are typically a quieter period for the business, we have deferred the formal newsletter until after the end of the first quarter. As you will have seen from a recent survey, (thank you for those who responded) we are looking to change the cadence, format and content of our future communications to make it more focussed and easier to digest, so this should be the last newsletter in this format.
Although it has been a bit of a slow start for sales and services, it has been a very busy period from a strategy perspective.
As a business we never stand still, so over the last few months we have been focussing on a number of key business areas to pinpoint where we feel we can improve our tools, skills and processes.
As well as our regular management meetings, we have hosted a number of internal strategy sessions and some education sessions focussed around our broader communications and the teams commercial awareness.
I hope that these provided some insight and clarity for those who attended. Some of the outputs from those sessions will feed into future strategy and will be shared more widely in the near future.
Even with the slow start to the year, from a financial standpoint, the first quarter was still very positive as we were over budget from a profit perspective by over £150k.
This result however is tempered by the fact that the budget for the first quarter was reduced to acknowledge that this period is notoriously slow, but this means that our targets now hike up over the coming months.
We have a lot of work to do across all areas of the business to increase our sales, maximise our potential and improve our efficiency and utilisation in order to ensure we remain competitive and stay ahead of target.
An example of this is in new business sales, were we have been seeing a lot more of the competition offer “SAAS” solutions, which in reality are not true SAAS but more of a pay per user OPEX model.
In order to combat this, we have looked at building a competitive pay yearly model (different to our upfront purchase and 20% annuals) and have recently closed a small new business deal (Severn side Fabrics), which will help us to prove that this model will work technically and commercially for the business.
Chris and the team are confident that with the healthy pipeline and this as an option in our kit bag, we can be more competitive and can close more future opportunities.
Some good news from sales to follow, but I won’t steal Chris’ thunder.
K3 IBS:-
The IBS team are slightly ahead of budget year to date and continue to provide a high quality of service to their loyal customers.
Well done to Jane and the team.
Marketing:-
We have lots to update you on so I have included further information here but some highlights include:
Customer Event
We are currently planning for this years customer event and are viewing a number of venues so we will update you asap.
IT Showcase events
2024 continues with great success at the IT Showcase events. We have attended two so far with 8 leads that the sales team are engaged with. Another 10 to go for 2024.
Make UK event
This year we attended for the first time, the Make UK annual conference which brought together more than 700 delegates to discuss the latest trends in Manufacturing. Take a look at our article here for more insight on the day
Customer newsletters
We have added the customer newsletters to the hub so you can take a look at what we are updating customers on each month. If you have any ideas on content to customers, please let us know. They can be found here.
Other campaigns we are working on:
• Electronics Campaign
• Aerospace Campaign
• I need campaign
• Manufacturing Survey insight campaign
• Is your ERP fit for purpose
Molly has been doing some brilliant work on our campaigns, website and socials.
New Business Sales:-
Win announcements
Severnside Fabrics has over 50-years track record in the manufacture of technical textiles. They are an established manufacturer within the commercial laundry, pollution control dust filtration, office automation, automotive and domestic textile appliance sectors. Part of Andrews Industries Limited, formed in 1894, the laundry division has been committed to research, development and innovation for over 100 years.
Severnside has identified NexSys as an ideal partner to improve all the processes within their business. They required an end-to-end solution covering finance, manufacturing, warehousing and better management reporting . We are providing our core SYSPRO solution on a hosted platform with 6 users. Additional modules are Fixed Assets and Making Tax Digital.
iCOMAT is a spin-out company from the University of Bristol, which provides beyond state-of-the-art lightweighting solutions based on the Rapid Tow Shearing (RTS) process. The company has grown rapidly and has secured direct contracts with major OEMs in the aerospace, automotive and space sectors. Keith Fairbrass (Director) is ex Cobham and Aerotron and helped select SYSPRO for this rapidly expanding business. They have purchased 15 users of SYSPRO for Financials, Purchasing, Inventory and 20 users of MOM ready for a phase two roll out onto the shop floor and DataSwitch integrations.
We are very hopeful of announcing another new business win within the next few days.
Congratulations to the team on winning this much needed new business.
Base Sales:-
Seemed to be a slow start to the year but things started to pick up in February and we can now see many of the opportunities we have been working on coming through.
There is an obvious push to get the diaries full, so we are working hard selling service days and getting upgrades scoped and booked in, of which we have seen many come in through February and March and many more to follow.
IBS – we have had our first IBS customer migration (Plastic Extruders) go live, the project has been a success, thank you to all those involved.
Our big focus is on customer retention, making sure we are in contact with all our customers to ensure we know what is going on in their business and better understand their future plans.
Operations:-
Since the last update the following customers have gone live:
• Plastic Extruders (Syspro 8 new business)
• Indespension new business (phase 1) Equator Payroll and T&A go-live
• Europa Orchard upgrade completed
• Radius MOM go-live
We also have a couple of additional go lives imminent in Ribble Cycles and Cambridge University
A large number of sites have also upgraded to and gone live on SYSPRO 8.
• Carl F Group
• Nenplas
• Stonebridge
• Swansea Industrial Components
• M&M Qualtech
• Thurlby Thandar
• Smartply
• T2 Alloys.
We also have 122 active projects including 29 upgrades and 11 new implementations.
My thanks to all of the delivery teams involved for all their hard work on these projects.
Support:-
The Support team have fielded 4058 support calls in the current licence year to date (ie since 1 November) .
Joshua Naidoo was appointed Application Support Team Leader on 1 November.
Jay Jackson has moved to the technical team and Umer Aftab joins us on 16 April as Jay’s replacement in the application support team.
The team have been actively working on reviewing knowledge base content in preparation for making it available to customers via the support portal from mid April.
Customer Experience:-
It’s always nice to share some positive feedback from our customers:
• Flowflex – Equator Migration
o We have had no issues so far and we have completed a full 2 weeks of wages and bank transfers for our shopfloor staff. Monthly salaries will be prepared next week. I am happy that you close this project and if anything arises I will raise with support. Please thank Adrian for a very successful & seamless project
• M&M Qualtech – SYSPRO 8 Upgrade
o I would like that take this opportunity to thank you both for your help and assistance throughout this project and please pass on our sincere thanks to the support team who have been extremely helpful and efficient in responding to all our queries.
• Ellard – Salesforce Integration
o Faye has been fantastic on both projects and communication has been brilliant so well done to Faye on this.
Product Management:-
SYSPRO Updates:
2024 Release: 1st SYSPRO update session provided a very high-level sneak peak into upcoming highlights. Items of note:
– Release of planned maintenance capabilities
– Enhancement of Quality to include non-conformance reporting and CAPA
– New SYSPRO MOM release with move to web-based scheduler and significant new functionality including capacity and shift management and employee based scheduling
– Introduction of a payment gateway for Invoices and Statements
– Ability to post GL Journals to any prior year (no more current/previous limitation and first foray to period-less accounting…)
– And more… please review the recording on the PartnerUp Portal under product communications section: https://syspro.zinfi.net/concierge/ucm/#/ucm/2036/content
Insider Program: SYSPRO has run 2 programs on existing functionality this year:
– AI to the UI – participation from Gerrit and Tobias
– CMS – participation from Gary H, Tobias and Maks
NexSys Products:-
DataSwitch IIoT module
Built to capture machine and sensor information and integrate this to SYSPRO MOM, this solution provides our own bridge for Factory Automation. As this is built on the DataSwitch platform, the solution also extends beyond SYSPRO MOM integration and allows us to integrate this rich data into SYSPRO (WIP, quality data, custom form fields), our extended solution ecosystem (TransLution) and beyond.
We are hoping to have the 1st machine integrated by the end of April posting through to MOM before expanding the offering to other customers.
Customer Webinar Updates:
We are continuing to host monthly webinars to our customers – the aim is to educate or introduce solutions customers may not be aware of as yet. They’re hosted live with most posted on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@NexSysUK/videos. We are starting to see new attendees at these session; please do mention these to customers when you speak with them as they help with keeping customers engaged with NexSys. If you do have any feedback or suggestions (yours or customers), please forward them on to Darshnee.
Webinars to date:
| Month | Topic | Presenter | Customer attendees | Different companies | # of companies with multi-attendees |
| January | Customisation in SYSPRO | Andrew Rudd | 63 | 40 | 15 |
| February | Anota | Jade and Antony (Anota) | 22 | 115 | 5 |
| March | TransLution | Bryan Whewell | 23 | 21 | 1 |
Note: as a result of the Customisation webinar, we are now offering an Advanced Application Designer course – 2nd May. Please ask any interested customers to reach out to their account manager
Upcoming planned:
| Month | Topic (Details to follow) |
| April | Equator |
| May | Project management |
| June | IFM and IIoT |
NexSys Product Development:-
Equator:
Release for the new tax year 2024-25 has been issued. HMRC accreditation is pending (they are just a bit slow this year) but expect to receive that shortly. Credit to Gary Rees for his work to make this happen.
In additional to the updates for the new tax year, the following minor enhancements have been introduced:-
• T & A/SFDC – Add option in Work Pattern Definitions –> View Options to allow start day of week to be changed and saved.
• Real Time – Improvements made to supervisor override processing.
• T & A/Personnel – Allow holiday rule to be specified against percentage of employees rather than a specific number.
• T & A/Personnel – Updates made to fit for work functions as a result of recent legislative changes. New report function added.
• Utilities – Add ability in Employee Import to allow import of deleted employees.
We also issued a release in January 2024, which contained the following enhancements in case anyone missed them:-
• Payroll – Pennies from heaven – option added to only process once during a tax month for non-monthly payrolls rather than every pay period.
• T & A/Personnel – Holiday Schedule has been updated and can now be loaded directly from the Equator main menu.
• Payroll – Payslip messages are now held by period so will now still be correct when a historic payslip is viewed.
• Portal – Holiday approval email now contains an .ics file to enable the holiday to be easily added to the employee’s Outlook calendar.
• Portal – Nationality, religion and ethnic group values in Employee Details can now be edited.
• Personnel – Salary History now permits allowances with a zero value to be added.
• Real Time – Emergency Presence (Fire) List now has improved tabular formatting.
• Portal – Managers are now able to view previously approved holidays (in addition to denied).
• Portal – Managers can now add a comment when approving or denying holiday requests, which will be shown in the employee email.
• Payroll – Option added to allow Dynamic Query to run using consolidated companies.
• T & A/Personnel – Line manager now available as a column in Holiday Authorisation and Absence Confirmation.
Orchard:
As Orchard Web progresses, we are looking to use the same approach to develop a common shipping solution that can be used and resold. The first focus is on FedEx with the deprecation of the current API we use, so this is acting as a driver to complete this work. Project wise, Ribble are scheduled to go-live with Orchard and WHS are progressing the implementation.
DataSwitch:
IIoT solution is in beta with time booked to kick of the beta testing at Samuel Heath this April. This will be a big step into providing a common machine integration solution to the rest of the base and to expand our partnership with IFM
Kami has been busy testing the next big release for DataSwitch and we should see an official release this April which will include the beta installation for IIoT. Also included are new API’s and the Saxon transformation engine which should increase the overall performance of DataSwitch
Craig and Declan are also very busy on customer specific project work.
People:-
Outgoing
Sue Rhodes (IBS) has decided that her 35th anniversary with K3 is a good time to put her feet up. Sue has therefore given notice of her intent to retire on the 5th of June.
I’m sure Jane and the rest of the IBS team will be very happy for Sue, once they get over the shock of her announcement. We will mark Sue’s retirement when it actually happens, but for now I’d just like to thank her for all her hard work and loyalty to the business and our customers.
Incoming
I’m pleased to announce that Umer Aftab will be joining the support team on 16th Apr-24, Umer has a support background joining us from the Stark Group.
Milestones
Gary Burgess and Paul Cole both celebrated significant milestone birthdays over the last couple of months. I’d like to congratulate them both, and thank them for their continued support.
I would also like to take a moment to celebrate some recent or imminent major work milestones, :
• Declan – 30 years service,
• Nigel, Drew and Jerris – 25 years service,
• Adrian and Andy Gilbert – 10 years service
• Irma, Darshnee and Lorraine – 5 years service.
Congratulations and a big thank you to you all for all of your hard work and commitment and don’t forget the long service award scheme.
Some additional exciting news:
Congratulations to Lauren, who has given me the okay to let everyone know that she will be taking some time out from August as she is expecting a baby in September. I’m sure that this will all go exactly to plan just like all of projects Lauren has managed over the years (on time and in budget, but questionable if it will be more or less painful? 😊).
In other news:
No real update on the building or our potential move. We are talking to the landowners (Peel Holdings), but nothing has been decided or agreed, so we remain in our current home until we hear something different.
Phew! that’s hopefully the last big newsletter and I’m sure you will all be glad to see us change from this format to more regular and smaller updates going forward.
If you have got anything you want to share or want us to mention, please remember to use the suggestions utility / mailbox.
Thanks for all your hard work and support.
Best Regards.
Nick
