Happy New Year

No song titles this week (there aren't enough to fill my blog) so it is just a simple message.

2013 was the year in which Zipporah turned 10 years old and it is a year in which much has changed.  It started quietly enough with the expansion of the team and has now seen us enter a period of restructure which will allow for the business to grow and develop for the next 10-20 years.

As with any company that is starting out and building year on year we have reached a point where a new structure is needed to give us more freedom to react quicker and deliver faster.  Demand increases every day and lean thinking and better processes are the key to helping that delivery alongside the larger team size. Our search for a Delivery Manager is in progress to ensure that day to day management is dealt with quickly and our Business Development team are working harder to ensure that all relationships are maintained so that we can better serve our clients future needs as well as today.  This also means that our delivery specialists (formally project managers now given the wider remit to ensure quality control alongside ensuring project dates are controlled) will be focussed firmly on delivery and quality to ensure that everyone gets where they need to be at the correct times.

Its been an exciting period from Zipporah since the summer.  What began with our 10th anniversary party has seen a lot of change and with the first quarter of 2014 set to bring more with some exciting new appointments then we expect to see 2014 put Zipporah in the strongest position to carry forward our vision of making our clients the most efficient they can be.

As with any large scale change we have a few humps to get over and a few pitfalls to avoid but we are lucky in that the people in our team are flexible and are committed to what is being achieved.  2013 focussed heavily on getting our Neo systems out there and this has been done to great success and so in 2014 we turn our attention to ensuring we have a team that is properly supported and nurtured to help us in our continual improvements programme.

In 2013 we have also gained a number of close working partnerships which have seen us work with some of the best suppliers in their field and we look forward to strengthening these partnerships with close integrations and more joint projects in 2014, both in the UK and around the world.

There is so much happening that whilst it makes you nervous I am so very proud and enthralled that the small business that I started with Emma 10 years ago is now growing and succeeding in doing so much on the cutting edge of technology.

So as we say goodbye to 2013 and prepare for the excitement and adventure of 2014 I take the opportunity to wish colleagues, friends, partners and clients a very happy new year and a prosperous (and more efficient!) 2014.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Scott

Merry Christmas Everyone

Already 2013 is drawing to a close as Christmas descends on the Zipporah offices.  Despite is being Christmas Eve we are still beavering away on making sure everything is ready for the New Year chase as everyone gets back to work.  That is until I finally say stop the cavalry and we all join our families and take a well earned break (for a day or two at least).

I'll talk about the year gone by in the traditional look back at 2013 next week.  Today I want to concentrate on making it warm this winter as we step into Christmas, taking a moment away from the mistletoe and wine to celebrate our team.  

It has been a year of change at Zipporah and during the course of this year and as we enter the next this will be a continuing theme as we restructure to become a stringer organisation to deliver better service.  Unfortunately this means you lose a few people along the way but its often forgotten to congratulate those who are getting behind such change.  All of the teams at Zipporah have worked like the little drummer boy over this year and have consistently supported the drive to do better and have pulled with us our efforts to achieve more.  Never afraid to stay another hour or stay another day they have worked long and hard to meet the demands of our client base.  Nobody gets everything right but nobody could do more in trying and for that reason I would wish all of the team a wonderful christmastime.

I have been constantly enthralled by the innovation that the technical team have shown this year with some fantastic innovations as we have developed the Neo systems.  Even more enthralling is the reaction I get to see from the clients when they look at what they have available to them as a tool.  I'm convinced that if a spaceman came travelling he would look at our work as the most cutting edge in our field.

I'll also take the opportunity to say Merry Christmas to Emma, without whom the day to day business would not operate so well.

It is at Christmas that you think about what you have and how fortunate you are and I feel very fortunate indeed.  I sometimes feel like I'm walking in the air as I think about the fantastic clients, colleagues, partners and friends that Zipporah has.  This really is the most wonderful time of the year and if Santa Clause is coming to town then he could just bring me some more team members like those I have and things won't go far wrong.

To everyone that has been involved with Zipporah in meeting and exceeding our expectations this year I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and as I'm driving home for Christmas this evening I will sing a song for all of you.

See you next week.

Scott

P.s.  I've managed to put a lot of song titles from popular Christmas Singles in this blog.  Did you get them all?

Santa & Elf Dash success.

This year’s Santa fun run took place at 11am on Sunday 8th December and Zipporah’s team including Scott, Kathryn, Imran, Nick and myself, along with hundreds of other Santa’s and Elves took part in this festive dash. The event was organised by Welsh Hearts charity which mission is centred on the prevention and management of heart diseases in Wales. The charity goal is to preserve, safeguard and promote the cardiovascular health of all person, while ensuring that monies raised in Wales are utilised and distributed within Wales.

In the run up to the Santa Dash, everyone on the team got involved in raising cash for Welsh Hearts. We organised two Coffee & Bake mornings in our offices based in the Cardiff Business Technology Centre. Each event was a huge success with many turning up on the day! The delicious cakes, rocky roads, mince pies and cute and delicious cupcakes were sold on the day! It was truly irresistible experience for anyone at the CBTC! All the baking would not have been possible without help of Jackie Hawkins (Will’s mum) who prepared an astounding variety of handmade cakes, from vanilla to chocolate cupcakes , and everything in between! In result we managed to raise a total of £250 pounds for Welsh Hearts , the money that will be used to buy defibrillators and emergency lifesaving equipment.

The run itself was a huge success with Nick finishing the race third! With over 700 participants this was a remarkable achievement, although for Nick, a keen and experienced long-distance runner, 5k dash came effortlessly! Imran followed closely after Nick, becoming the first Elf to cross the finish line! The rest of us set more relaxed pace, taking our time to complete the run, while enjoying festive atmosphere and the breath-taking scenery of Cardiff Bay. All in all, it was a great day!

Merry Christmas everyone! I will see you again in January 2014!

Anna Mazur

Marketing Executive

Writing quality code in Zipporah.

When it was first mentioned that we would be writing a blog I thought 'that'll be easy, I’ll just write about being the new guy'. It turns out that Zipporah is a fast moving place and I’m not the new guy anymore. There are already new faces in the office and each is needed because ambitious plans are afoot.

Neo systems are being developed as prior blog entries mention. We have customers on the other side of the planet. (Again mentioned in earlier blog entries.) None of the many goals we have could be met by chaining a single developer to a desk and feeding him a steady stream of energy drinks and fast food. It takes a team of people with the aptitude and desire to write quality code.

As developers here at Zipporah it’s true we spend most of our time developing for the Web. Its such a large part of what we do that its right there in our job titles. However it’s not all we do. Since there are people who use desktop applications that means there is work for us at Zipporah to do in that field. Whether on the Web or right on your desktop we work with technologies with a dizzying array of acronyms HTML, .NET, C#,SQL, RAZOR etc and probably a few back-ronyms too.

Zipporah developers come from a range of backgrounds. Mine is more years than I like to mention writing desktop software. Others have large amounts of web experience or come from graphic design backgrounds. This diversity has the useful side effect that whatever the challenge chances are someone will have an idea how to tackle it or better still there will be multiple solutions proposed informed by the varied experiences in the room. However much you know about one given technology chances are you will need to use some other technology that someone else in the room knows well. We have a well stocked shelf of books on a swathe of topics but perhaps the most valuable repository of knowledge is in the heads of the other people sat in the room.

An army of gurus with a narrow knowledge base may get a job done but over time it can lead to a collective myopia about the best way to achieve a goal. Diversity and exchange of knowledge are useful tools for any development team. They introduce us all to the newest technologies and if you are to continue delivering quality solutions to customers requirements it’s definitely a good idea to keep everyone learning new things. As they say 'Every day is a school day'.

Chris Habgood 

Web Developer 

Time is creeping up on us again.

So it’s December again already. I heard my first Christmas song on the radio this morning and everywhere I look people are starting to count down the days. Outfits are being prepared for the Christmas Party and I haven’t even started the questions for our annual quiz yet with only 2 weeks to go!

Fortunately the Christmas leave is a headache already sorted with ample cover now in place for all of our clients across the globe. In planning and business terms though I’m already focussed towards the New Year when Zipporah will be entering the final stage of its changes to structure to deliver a better service and solution to our clients for the future.

Whilst Christmas sees me taking over a number of projects to cover for leave, the expected news of a birth for our Project Manager Luke and some departures, but the New Year will see some exciting changes.

As of the start of January we will be changing things around as our Project Management team will be refocused as Delivery Experts. This will see their roles encompass project management, business analysis and include quality control (I like to compare them to the chefs at the pass – but with a little less colourful language). They will be focussed on the delivery of projects for clients. Whilst the Delivery Specialists will focus on ensuring the projects are all moving forward the Business Development team will be taking on the client liaison outside of projects to ensure user groups are ongoing and to take in ideas and thoughts in a more general sense from our clients.

To top the process off we will be putting our new Delivery Manager in place. He will manage the teams focussed toward delivery of our solutions and will become a key resource for managing things internally and working with our clients to ensure that everything works as smoothly as freshly packed snow on a ski slope.

It’s an exciting time and it’s the right time. As our clients are getting squeezed more and more my role will be far more focused toward finding ways to help them beat the squeeze and improve our service to help them improve on their service. Our work on the systems is already paying off and our work with several clients has seen great strides being achieved in speed of implementation and customer satisfaction and now with our restructure we have a team which will fully support this and improve on things for the future.

Just one more thought for the day. As you read this across the UK ecommerce and online transactions are at their highest point for the year with anticipated usage expected to be particularly high as it always has been for the first Monday in December. This is the time when online transactions are considerably higher than in store transactions as people choose the ease of shopping in the break between Coronation Street and Eastenders over stepping out into the cold. Now take a moment to think about what you want to achieve in terms of customer transaction online rather than through call centres and in council attendance. Your customers are more than ready for the online world and more than prepared to take advantage whether its online services such as licence requests or bookings we have the tools to help you deliver this. As we reach the final stages of the financial year for councils and the forthcoming budget cuts loom for the next financial year maybe its worth getting in touch to see quite how much you can do online with your citizens.

Happy December everyone, I’ll be back before Christmas. In the meantime, its just 23 more days to go……

Scott