Business Development

Wins include:

  • Orbit, National Museum of Wales, St David’s Children’s Society

Awaiting response

  • Bromford Housing (tender response), EKF Diagnostics, AST, Voltage, Springfield Services, Procentia, Nissan, CLS Holdings and Peaks and Plains Housing, Cardiff Met.

New opportunities

  • Estyn (Website tender), Northumbria Police, BPHA, Vending Sense, SCPS Group, Kingsley Wood, IIS, Harmoni Homes, UKLS and the Legal Aid agency

Progress

  • We have made significant progress as a team on the ability to respond to tenders. This has resulted in BD impacting less on the wider team for help.
  • BD and marketing are starting to work more collaboratively, combining our focus which is very exciting for all involved.
  • We are embracing the new Spidogs value pricing approach. As a result, it impacts more than just pricing, and it contributes to long-term profit success and quality delivery.

Spindogs Marketing

What’s been happening and what’s coming up?

  • We finalised and launched the Housing 23 Insight paper
  • We have some great new content drafted and ready to seed once the holidays are over, much of which is from the new issue of Bark
  • Laura has been continuing her follow-up from the Housing 23 expo with BD as well as a performance review of the last 11 months
  • We now have 3 external events in the Autumn that the team are working on, covering Housing, Automotive and professional services, this is alongside our own intended in-house events
  • We have agreed to sponsor 3 creative morning events in the Spring of 2024 and more details on these will follow

People & Culture 

What’s been happening?

  • Recruitment and onboarding
    • We’ve been busy helping support the LMs with the onboarding of the new starters (Anya, Nicola and Mike) who will join Spindogs next week.
  • Wellbeing series
    • We hope you enjoyed the staff party earlier this month! It was a fantastic opportunity to all get together and bond as a team; further robusting our social connection.
    • We also had an incredible Q&A with Rhinal Patel earlier this month.
  • DEIB survey results:
    • When asked if they felt they were treated fairly within Spindogs, 53.1% of the team strongly agreed, 40.8% of the team agreed and 6.1% felt neutral.
    • When asked if they felt like they belonged at our organisation, 42.9% of the team strongly agreed, 42.9% of the team agreed and 14.3% felt neutral.
    • When asked if they felt accepted as a member of their team, 57.1% of the team strongly agreed, 34.7% of the team agreed and 8.2% felt neutral.
    • When asked if their managers offer equal opportunities to people of all backgrounds, 45.8% of the team strongly agreed, 41.7% of the team agreed and 12.5% felt neutral.
    • When asked if they believe Spindogs is a diverse organisation, 34.7% of the team strongly agreed, 46.9% of the team agreed and 16.3% felt neutral, whilst 2% disagreed.
    • We heard these results and they are important to us. And we acknowledge that we have things to work on and adjust.

What’s coming up?

Over the next coming months, we have lots of items that are planned and in motion. 

  • Wellbeing series
    • Next week we have a yoga session, which will hopefully be outdoors (weather permitting).
    • In September, we will have some resilience sessions with our HR team
    • A new well-being series survey will be coming your way – we want to hear from you!!
    • Second-hand September – clothes swap
    • Nutritionist talk

Development

What’s been happening?

  • We have 2 new .NET starters both coming from other agencies in the UK…
    • Neil Salmond (Umbraco)
    • Ashley Farmer (Umbraco)
  • We have 1 new Laravel developer
    • Matt Gibbons (Senior Laravel)
  • Recruitment is still happening for Team Leads in Laravel and .NET
  • Appreciation time…
    • A HUGE shout out to the team working on PHS
    • Steve Tozer – NSTA Front Door Firewall
  • What we’re working on:
    • Southern Housing
    • Fritz Fryer
    • WP Platform
    • Protokol
    • Elmhurst Energy Phase 3
  • Releases:
    • Umbraco 12.1 release candidate.
    • Umbraco Commerce
    • Umbraco Forms 12.1 & 10.5
    • The new back office is taking shape with the launch of Project Bellissima (target Umbraco 14)
    • WordPress 6.3
    • Woocommerce 8.0
    • Strengthened partnership between Frontend and Design teams.
    • Increased interaction in stand-up meetings for better project understanding.
    • Weekly “show and tell” sessions for sharing ongoing work.
    • Emphasizing constructive handover notes and feedback.
    • Acknowledging strengths alongside areas for improvement.
    • Shifting towards a balanced perspective on quality.Quality Focus:
  • FE & Design Collaboration:
    • Strengthened partnership between Frontend and Design teams.
    • Increased interaction in stand-up meetings for better project understanding.
    • Weekly “show and tell” sessions for sharing ongoing work.
  • Notable in progress achievements on Baseline:
    • Integration of Mega Menu into Baseline.
    • Introduction of AUX Menu.
    • Preparing for the upcoming release.

Project Management

What’s been happening?

  • The team have been working on utilising Zoho as the project management tool it’s intended to be! Mapping out projects correctly with the running order and making sure that Zoho is our one source of truth across all projects.
  • They have all been supporting each other with knowledge sharing and helping on projects where needed – this is showing great team collaboration and helping everyone in the team gain confidence in areas they may find challenging.

What’s coming up?

  • We’re ready and excited to welcome 2 new starters to our PM team on Wednesday 6th September!
    • Anya Summers
    • Nicola Sharman

Business Partner

What’s been happening?

  • The team have been picking up the reigns in Claire’s absence, by supporting each other with nudges and reminders, taking ownership of certain areas and doing an incredible job at managing their accounts at the same time!

What’s coming up?

  • The team will be working on their client strategies and how to best guide their clients on the Spindogs’ experience. This kickstarts next week with a session with Liam, that we’re all super excited about!

 

Together the PM and BP teams have been switching up stand ups. Replacing the usual team stand-ups with individual daily project standups. The results are already apparent, with a greater involvement of the project and being closer to the delivery teams, means that we are able to outline priorities, detail challenges and pick up any bombs before they explode!

 

Digital Marketing

What’s been happening?

  • The team have secured a 13-month SEO retainer this month with Elmhurst Energy, bringing our total number of recurring clients to 27 – the highest number of retainers & value of retainers we’ve ever had!
  • Quotes for GA4 configuration + training continue to be sent out to multiple clients (new & existing) amounting to £15k (value > time).
  • Multiple extremely successful in-person account strategy meetings were held in the office with Abox, Thomas Lloyd and Bryn Meadows to outline recent successes and future plans.
  • Delivery team members continue to sharpen their skills with recognised qualifications and certifications:
    • Ben – Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional status
    • Hari – Meta Blueprint Agency Education Program
  • Goodbye to Ben…for now!

IT

What’s been happening?

  • Setting up systems/laptops for 3 new starters
  • Dealt with 385 emails into the IT inbox (July)
  • Upgraded our Internal Infrastructure Server from Proxmox 7 to 8 – major upgrade – went smoothly whilst everyone was sleeping
  • Upgraded our Pfsense router / VPN to the latest major release -went smoothly whilst everyone was sleeping
  • Migrated Sentry and Sonarqube to their own server from our Internal Infrastructure server
  • Renewing our Cyber Essentials Standard accreditation – Awaiting results!! – Renewal of Cyber Essentials Plus next!

Support

What’s been happening?

  • We have had a huge amount of tickets raised with 3414 this month.
  • We’ve been introduced to PHS after their recent onboarding and we’re really excited to start supporting them!​
  • We’ve been working on how we can develop E-Learning and we’re looking at making improvements around the training and documentation about support for when we’re onboarding new starters .
  • Priya and the team have had some incredible feedback lately, especially from Malcolm Heeley of Triumph

What’s coming up?

  • We’ve got comms going out on 1st September (today) about our existing WordPress clients going onto a subscription ahead of Jan 2024.