Arena announce CSR initiative |
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The Arena Group Annual meeting, held at Cedar Court Wakefield on the 15th of November, witnessed the announcement of a new CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative to help benefit the local community. |
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Over the past year Arena has been investigating the most constructive ways in which the company can give something back to society, particularly children in our local community. Along with contributing to the preservation of the planet for our future generations, by committing to achieve the BSI 14001 environmental standard and support the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Arena has also introduced a new scheme that will allow employees 2 days per annum in which they can get involved with local charity work. Through partnerships with Leeds Ahead and Barnardos, staff will be given help in finding the best ways in which they can get involved and give something back to the community, whilst at the same time enriching their working lives. We hope that this will benefit the local community, but also make working at Arena an even more fulfilling and rewarding experience. For more information please visit: |
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Postal Strikes: We can lessen the affect and save you money! |
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The recent industrial action taken by Royal Mail workers has caused great inconvenience to many organisations throughout the UK. With the reduction in social communication via 'snail mail' over the last couple of decades, will such action act as a catalyst for the same trend to sweep through the business world too? |
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Not being able to send important documents to customers, suppliers and other trading partners is estimated to cost small and medium-sized businesses, per strike, £2.5 million through delayed post, not to mention to cost to the public sector too. The biggest problem is that not sending invoices means not getting paid on time, which puts real strain on the cash flow of many SME’s. Whilst there are alternatives to Royal Mail, smaller businesses may find themselves frustrated in the search for a replacement service. 94 per cent of small businesses use the Royal Mail exclusively because other providers don't offer an alternative that is suitable for them. However, rather than looking for a replacement postal service, should SME’s be looking for another method of delivery? As technology advances and more and more businesses embrace it, surely the time has come to consider how basic business functions, such as the sending of invoices and other documents, can be greatly improved through sending via email, fax and the internet. At Arena Group we now send about a third of invoices via email, a figure we hope to increase, using software solutions that we also supply. In addition to this, we send other documents by scanning and emailing them directly from multifunctional devices that we have around our offices. This allowed us to continue to send invoices and other documents to a number of our customers throughout the postal strikes, helping to minimise the disruption caused. To find out how you could benefit from the cost and efficiency benefits of implementing such solutions please contact us for more information. |
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Fire, flood: Are your vital business documents secure? |
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The recent flooding in our region has highlighted the serious consequences that being struck by any disaster can have for a business. This has prompted many businesses to consider how they would cope with such an event? |
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Good news and bad news After the initial horror of suffering a fire or flood, the good news is that as a properly insured business you are likely to be able to repair damage to property and replace ruined equipment. The bad news is that one thing that you cannot replace is the invaluable information that is contained in your now burnt, soggy, or generally ruined documents. Given that DTI statistics show 70% of businesses who suffer a major data loss due to fire/flood cease trading within 18 months, this certainly is an issue of great concern. Disaster recovery The solution to this problem is an effective disaster recovery plan that takes into account not only the need for alternative premises and equipment, but also the importance of preserving the valuable information held in your documents. Electronic document management (EDM) can provide a means of securely storing your data and form a crucial element of your disaster recovery plan. By scanning and storing documents in an EDM system a backup of all this information can easily be stored at an external location, taking away the risk and making retrieving your documents the easiest part of the disaster recovery process. Resistance to change Unfortunately businesses often see this as insurance against a disaster, and nobody likes buying insurance, right? Another issue is that businesses are comfortable using filing cabinets for storing their documents, despite the high costs of this in terms of the space they occupy and the man hours that are spent searching for misfiled documents. So much more to offer The truth is EDM isn’t just document insurance. Granted document security alone forms a compelling argument for EDM, but the real benefits come from how much more efficient it can make your workforce and your organisation as a whole. Would you like document insurance? Maybe. Would you like to find any document at the touch of a button, have the information to answer customer queries on the phone, and unlock the space occupied by your filing cabinets? Now you’re talking! For more information please visit our document solutions pages or contact us |
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Annual Conference- Good to Great |
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This years annual conference took place at the De Vere Herons’ Reach hotel in Blackpool. With Steve McDermott as the keynote speaker, the theme of the conference was to revisit taking Arena from good to great. |
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From finance to admin to sales, every speaker from every department acknowledged the importance of continuing to improve on our already excellent levels of customer service. Something which is undoubtedly the key to any organisation going from good to great. With business matters out of the way, and Arena’s commitment to constantly improving customer service reinforced once again, employees were treated to a fine meal and then live entertainment that went on well into the wee small hours. Here’s to another successful conference in 2008 and another 12 months of striving to ensure our levels of customer service continue to be the best around! |
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Intel could be fined millions of dollars over lost emails 18th April 07 The importance of keeping a secure archive of all business emails has recently been highlighted in the USA, where Intel, a manufacturer of computer processors, is potentially facing being fined millions of dollars over lost emails. The judge in the Intel-AMD lawsuit has ordered both sides to work with a mediator to figure out how serious Intel's loss of email is, after Intel recently admitted that it had deleted some of the emails AMD requested in discovery in the case. The judge gave Intel 30 days to determine whether any of the lost emails were relevant to AMD's suit and how important they are. Intel could face sanctions for the destruction of the emails. |
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Intel, in court filings on Monday, acknowledged that for three and a half months after AMD filed its suit on June 27, 2005, a small number of employees whose e-mails were considered potential evidence failed to move all messages to their hard drives, which means they would have been purged automatically from Intel's system. In addition, "a few" employees believed erroneously that Intel's IT group was automatically saving their e-mails. |
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If the judge rules against Intel on this discovery issue, Intel could be fined millions of dollars, or the jury could be told to presume the emails were damaging to Intel. Intel has already delivered 17 million pages of potential evidence and will deliver 30 million more before the trial resumes in May. Mitral Systems Ltd, part of the Arena Group, have developed M-store Message, a piece of software that can capture all incoming and outgoing email in a secure archive. This prevents emails being lost even if users delete them, avoiding the problems outlined in the above case. Find out more about M-Store Message |
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Print Costs Rocketing? If you’re a customer of ours you’ll know printing and photocopying doesn’t have to be expensive. But if you’re not, you may well be interested to know that printer ink is one of the most expensive commodities in everyday usage! |
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1,000 times more expensive than rocket fuel, twice the cost of Chanel No.5 perfume, and seventeen times the price of vintage champagne! Printer ink could well be one of your biggest office expenses. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not sure how much printing is costing your business? Free of charge, we’ll come into your organisation and conduct a print audit. This will tell you exactly how much you are printing and how much this is costing your organisation. We will then be able to tell you which product(s), if any, could lower the cost and improve the efficiency of document production in your organisation. |
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MITRAL JOIN THE ARENA GROUP We are delighted to announce that Mitral Systems Ltd has become the Arena Group’s 7th acquisition. Based in Shepley, Huddersfield, Mitral is a leading provider of workflow, document management and bespoke software solutions and its client base is truly global. |
Mitral Systems Ltd provides the group with extensive knowledge and expertise in all areas of document management. This, combined with our already extensive knowledge of document production, puts the Arena Group in a perfect position to supply our customers with total office solutions.
Adrian Fitzpatrick said “The acquisition of Mitral is key to the success of our strategy to become the best provider of print and document solutions in the UK. We have for many years been experts in the management of hard document output, managing some ¾ billion prints per annum for our clients. Now we are able to offer these same clients bespoke methods of capturing, storing, transferring and retrieving both hard and soft documents, creating significant business efficiencies along the way. The management team are therefore extremely delighted about what is undoubtedly one of the most exciting acquisitions to date.”
For more information on Mitral Systems Ltd please visit www.mitral.co.uk
ARENA GROUP MAKES TOP 100! Wakefield based Arena Group, the largest independent suppliers of Toshiba business equipment in Europe, is celebrating after being named in the prestigious Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies To Work For 2006. It was ranked 71st in the UK overall in the competition for small/medium employers which recognises the importance of staff satisfaction in the workplace. Company rankings were largely determined by the responses given by employees to 70 questions about life in their organisation. According to the Sunday Times report, staff at Arena Group feel appreciated and comfortable with their bosses expectations, earning the company top 20 scores for rewarding good work (83%), fair workload (75%) and deadlines (80%). Workers also reported little stress, giving an 85% score – ranking it 15th in the category. |
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HR Consultant for Arena Group, Moira Conlon, nominated the company for the award. She said: “I read last year’s list of the Best Small Companies to Work For and thought that Arena Group had a great chance of making the top 100. The organisation is a rewarding company to work for, they recognise hard work and generally care for their employees.” One of the four founding partners of Arena Group, Adrian Fitzpatrick said: “We are delighted to be ranked in the Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies To Work For 2006. We have always believed that having happy employees is the key to a productive and successful workplace.” March '06 |
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Harry Wells
(pictured right) being presented
with the
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AN OFFICE machine supplier from Robin Hood has been named one of the top 100 small companies to work for in the country. March '06 |
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