Business Development  

We have been working on some really interesting opportunities that include:

  • PHS – (£120K+)
  • Ford – (£80k+)
  • EKF Diagnostics – (£75k+)
  • NSTA – Dan Lewis (£160K)

We have also been trying to clean the CRM as many out-of-date opportunities.

We went to meet Ford which was very good and we hope they will be a great new client.

Dan celebrated his birthday in Dublin.

And we’re all doing the Big Green Hike on Sunday (April 2nd), if anyone would like to join us? If so reach out to Tash in the Spindogs Marketing team!

 

Spindogs Marketing

We have been working alongside BD to enhance our Housing Association sector page in the hope of creating a more focused destination for prospects, this has very much been a combined effort between Andy, Claire and Tash on the content, visuals and website changes and we’re very pleased that following the updates we have already received an audit request from a HA on this page!

Dan has also been doing some focussed HA research to support the next stage of our HA activity

Laura has been working hard with the content team on our blogs and case studies, analysing, reviewing and improving, as well as fresh content

We have finally agreed on a date for our combined event with Hyundai, which will take place on the 20th of April and will be an insight into their recent New Dawn campaign, Tash and Laura have both been working hard behind the scenes to get this launched and we’re hoping the invites will go out today

We have also secured our stand at Housing Expo

We are planning to enter Yorkshire Housing into the Umbraco Awards in April and look forward to getting that application in, it is a site to be proud of!

With Bark due to launch on 1st June, it means we have an extremely busy April/May/June planned but we’re all excited ​by the busyness and keen to see lots of our prep work come to fruition!

 

People & Culture 

We have been reviewing and revising as appropriate some of our processes, policies and guides, as we hope to start moving them all into Zoho Learn this week

Recruitment and onboarding continue to be a priority for the team. ​

Earlier this month, we hosted a week of Catchphrase quizzes. Jess was our overall winner (huge congrats!) and her prize was a donation of £50 to Anna’s Rescue Centre, which is a cat rescue centre. Big thanks to everyone who participated and to those who joined in and supported their teammates!​

This week we had Craig from Penguin Wealth host a lunch ‘n’ learn on ‘Long-term Financial Planning’.​

We have been planning Q3 of the Wellbeing Series and some key things to look forward to are:

  • Big Green Hike – charity event
  • ‘Productivity & Prioritisation’ training with Claire F
  • Art class
  • Learning how to bake cookies with Kirsty
  • Clothes swap
  • Beach clean
  • Resilience training

Frontend

Improved learning/communication: FE have been working closely together on shared projects which have allowed them to learn from each other. We have been sharing knowledge and best practices which have led to a supportive environment.

Rosie and Sam have been working on MHPA which has helped increased efficiency by dividing the workload and increasing productivity.

Rosie really enjoyed implementing Bootstrap Tour in IBOS.

Don has been working on a lot of quick amendments to projects this month and has also completed a quick turn-around project for Think Orchard that went live yesterday!

Tegan has been continuing to work on a new rebrand for Traveline, Tegan has enjoyed demonstrating her strategic thinking skills and her ability to manage complex legacy projects.

 

.NET

Kentico Xperience 13 will stop supporting .NET Core 3.1 in Q1 2023

There are minor releases for Umbraco Forms and Umbraco Workflow in v10 and 11

Umbraco security patch of medium severity released for Umbraco v8,v10 & v11

Our Baseline now has news listing with filtering and site search with filtering, basic site header and footer all using frontend baseline code structure (thanks to Dom for this)

And there is less than 6 months to go for Umbraco 7 support

 

WordPress

New ACF updates to plugin to allow post types/taxonomies to be made in ACF

Davey reworked our WP platform pipeline script to v3.1

 

Bespoke Solutions

It was Nash’s first day on Tuesday!

The team have been trialling a new process for HMUK Balance Scorecard to hopefully free up time for BST developers

We’re in the process of upgrading a couple of sites to Laravel 10

The new Package development has been placed on hold (for now)

We are currently onboarding RedBerry to Triumph AMP

Digital Marketing

Ryan, Ben & Fabrizio will be attending Ad World, an online conference, this week.

The new and improved (and easy to use) Keyword research dashboard is in its final stages of review and will be rolled as a “baseline” for all keyword research to come. Massive shout out to Chris, Dan and the team for all their hard work on this.

We’re working hard on making sure all the relevant information is on Zoho learn, we as a DM team would highly encourage all of you to take a look at some of the materials available.

 

Project Management

Visibility of the projects managed by PMs in Zoho is allowing us to make the right business decisions with the capacity and right fit for projects.

PM progression structure to be rolled out in Q3.

 

Business Partner

We won our first-ever automotive retainer with Harley Davidson. A pinnacle moment in Spindogs’ history!

We welcomed Craig to the team.

We’ve been hitting all our targets and providing an incredible client experience.

There have also been exciting new opportunities with Triumph Adventure Champions, Southern Housing and Hyundai.

 

Together the BPs and PMs have been…

Working on cross-collaboration across the departments including

  • Working together on Premier Marinas and Transport for Wales
  • Peer reviews and training
  • Resource sharing and supporting new quick-win opportunities

IT

We’ve reconfigured the Spindogs VPN for easier management of VPN profiles / Security and IP addresses that are routed through the VPN

Later this month we’ll be making VPN routing changes to the office router. You’ll no longer need to connect to the Spindogs VPN when visiting the office.

 

Solutions Architect

We have been rolling out PTL Training to Team Leads as well as improving Pillar 2 Opportunity turnaround.

There have been small updates to the Opportunity and Referral Process and we have been trialling charging for our time spent quoting.

 

Support

The team have been in the office this month for a Support photoshoot!

We’ve been reaching out to clients about a recent security patch that’s been released by Umbraco that we’ve advised needs to be completed.

We’ve been working on improvements around the SLA and increased our adherence, even more, this month and increased adherence by 15% since January.

We’ve been doing a rundown of Subscriptions in Q2 to see how it’s gone and focusing on our next steps for Q3.

Earlier in the month, Jess took crowing glory and won catchphrase!

We have Eliza Goth joining as Junior Client Support Rep on 3rd May.

“Thank you so much for your efficient and professional help in updating The Women’s Council website We really appreciate your kind help.” -TWC

“Jessica replied quickly and with the correct instructions to help me with my issue. Thanks! ” -Tellermate