Member News

Norfolk ground and air source heat pump installer Finn Geotherm, has become Carbon Trust accredited. Under the scheme, installations carried out by Finn Geotherm for small and medium sized businesses may be eligible for funding by the Trust of up to £10,000.

The Carbon Trust’s mission is to accelerate the move to a sustainable, low carbon economy. Its Accredited Supplier scheme is the UK’s market-leading initiative for high quality energy efficient equipment and renewable technology suppliers, providing independent validation and recognition of a supplier’s skills and services. Accredited suppliers must meet or exceed criteria set by the Carbon Trust, which is designed to examine their capability to deliver thoughtful, well-designed energy efficient and renewable energy systems.

Finn Geotherm is one of only a limited number of UK heat pump companies accredited by the scheme. By achieving Carbon Trust accreditation, Finn Geotherm is able to undertake installations for small and medium sized businesses that may be eligible to receive up to £10,000 from the Carbon Trust Green Business Fund towards their energy saving equipment purchase.

Guy Ransom, commercial director at Finn Geotherm, said: “We are very pleased to have achieved Carbon Trust accreditation. The accreditation not only recognises our expertise in ground and air source heat pumps, but it also gives us the opportunity to further help small and medium sized businesses who are considering installing renewable energy systems and may benefit from the Carbon Trust Green Business Fund.”

For more information on Finn Geotherm, visit www.finn-geotherm.co.uk. For details on the Carbon Trust and the Green Business Fund, see www.carbontrust.com. 

It was all hands on deck at JMS headquarters last week, with a quick turnaround needed for new sponsorship bumpers for returning client TrustATrader.

After creating ITV Anglia weather bumpers for TrustATrader last year we were happy to be given the opportunity to pitch for their new national sponsorship bumpers for ITV1’s Bigheads, but it was a last minute job.  We had less than 24 hours to pitch ideas and from green light to delivery we managed to cast, set build, edit, clear and deliver all the idents needed within just 4 working days.

‘The Trader Olympics’ is made up of a series of eight short and colourful bumpers showing tradesmen competing with each other for the title of champion trader. The action and aesthetic complements the zaniness of Bigheads, with plenty of fun and energy!

From conception to delivery, we were able to deal with all aspects of production in-house, keeping to the tight deadlines. You can see our work on ITV at 7pm on Sunday evenings.

We’re glad to announce that working in conjunction with Vaccoda Design, we are working with gas engineers and Bromley based gas and plumbing experts Gas Safe, providing search engine optimisation (SEO) for their website(gassafe.net). Gas Safe are a South London based business that provides a wide range of plumbing and gas-related services including boiler servicing and installation, power flushing of central heating systems, Legionella assessments and much more. Initially, Gas Safe’s website was lacking a number of fundamental SEO aspects including meta data, including titles and descriptions, SEO-friendly content and a competitive and clean backlink profile.

What we have Done

Initially, in depth keyword research was required for Gas Safe to ensure relevant keywords and online searches were targeted. A competitive industry, it was important to research both long tail searches and short tail searches relating particularly to boilers and central heating services offered by Gas Safe.

Based on the SEO-friendly content management system (CMS), WordPress, we needed to update various settings for their website to make sure that Google and other search engines are able to properly crawl [analyse and rank] the Gas Safe website.

This has included installing various plugins for the website such as Yoast SEO. We were also required to remove meta keywords from the website as this is an outdated practice that is not beneficial for modern day SEO.

Having completed the routine updates of the website, we undertook a full meta data update of the website. This entailed going through each of their site pages and updating their meta titles and meta descriptions to make sure they are best placed to be ranked by Google.

We have also begun to populate the site with content and have written a brand-new landing page for their newest service; boiler finance.

As Gas Safe have not previously optimised any element of their website we have also been researching various competitive keyword terms for Gas Safe to target and rank well for. Furthermore, we are carrying out clean and SEO-friendly link building to increase the number of reputable websites that provide link traffic to the Gas Safe website. This is important as it acts as a powerful trust signal to search engines that the site is worthy of higher rankings.

Gas Safe have already seen several keywords move up a number of pages on Google including ‘boiler finance’ and we are looking forward to helping Gas Safe improve further online through carrying out further keyword research and planning as well as constructing a wide range of bespoke and content-rich landing pages to improve rankings and increase the offerings of the Gas Safe website. 

5 years ago today, on the 26th April 2012 Naked Element was incorporated by Matthew Wells, Chris Wright and our CEO Paul Grenyer.    Over the 5 years Naked Element has successfully developed software for a wide variety of clients, helping them to improve their business processes and to increase their efficiency, saving them both time and money.    A couple of most recent projects that we’re proud of:   Fountain Partnership – An online marketing agency. “Naked Element’s software for Fountain reduces processing time by 95%.” Naked Element were chosen to build a script which would allow Fountain to manage one of their largest clients in Google AdWords. In simple terms a script was created that allowed the user to specify AdWords accounts, campaigns and ad groups and then to enter a search, replacing each with a phrase or word.   IDSystems – Suppliers and installers of doors and windows. Naked Element developed a bespoke web application for IDSystems. The new application is designed to aid their trade partners through the complex choices and range of options available to IDSystems customers. Because of the complex nature of the product and service that this Norfolk company offer, the software used to handle their sales and quotes, both internally and when with a potential customer, has to be truly unique.   Over time we’ve evolved to not only offer software development, but also the design and build of responsive websites and consultancy services to improve development processes.   In the beginning, neither Paul or Matthew claimed to be professors on the business side of things and only really wanted to write software! In order to grow, the guys worked with a handful of consultants to keep them on the right track. Emma Gooderham, who is now our Commercial Director helped back in 2015 for a few weeks to market Naked Element. We have also worked with James Allison from WLP who took on the role of our growth accelerator coach from April 2016-2017, and we continue to undergo sales training with Ermine Amies of Sandler.   Along with other networking events, Naked Element have been members of the Norfolk Chamber for a little over 3 years, and we continue to use the events as a way to build up our network and bring in business.   Over the years we’ve built up expertise in iOS Development, Front and Back end, .Net development and cross platform mobile apps using Xamarin with our trusted team of developers.   What was a team of 3 full time employees, is now an expanding team consisting of:   Paul Grenyer, CEO Charlotte Grenyer, Sales Co-ordinator Emma Gooderham, Commercial Director Rain Crowson, Administrator Apprentice & PA Chris “Frankie” Salt, Software Developer Jack Rogers, Software Apprentice Emily Vinsen, Junior Software Developer Shelley Burrows, Web Developer Kieran Johnson, Software Developer Adrian Pickering, Software Developer Luke Rogers, Software Developer   Lewis Leeds also played a big part of Naked Element and was with us throughout his apprenticeship and beyond. He recently moved on to pursue his interests in Project Management and wish him well in the future.   Naked Element are very keen to help bring young developers into the industry. We offer work experience to students throughout their courses and A-levels. A couple of A-Level students, Tom Alabaster and Chelsea Crawford were especially brilliant have returned to Naked Element  to work during school holidays.   So here’s to another 5 great years of expanding our team, our clients and our network. We thank everyone who has helped us to grow along the way, and we look forward to driving our successes even more over the next 5.   Click here to read on our blog.

Leathes Prior are proud to announce that they will be supporting their 2017 Charity of the Year, The OPEN Youth Trust, by co-sponsoring the charity in their inaugural Oktoberfest event, alongside Adnams and Bitburger.

The already popular event will take place at the former site of Barclays Bank on Bank Plain in Norwich, now the home of the charitable youth trust which primarily focuses on enhancing and improving youth care in the community.

Oktoberfest will run from Thursday 5th October to Saturday 7th October, with the Friday and Saturday sessions having already sold out, there is now only limited availability for the Thursday session.

For as little as £10, plus booking fee, guests will receive a specially branded limited edition Norwich Bavarian Beer Stein and access to full evening of Bavarian food, drink and musical entertainment provided by top Umpah band The Bavarian Strollers and local pop favourites Night Train. A limited amount of VIP tickets are available at the cost of £35 + VAT for the Thursday evening, which provides reserved stage side seating, table service, complimentary first drink and Bratwurst and the aforementioned Beer Stein.

As a firm Leathes Prior are delighted to be supporting their Charity of the Year OPEN in such a way that will allow them to entertain guests at such a fantastic event whilst also helping raise funds that go directly to the charity.

John Gordon-Saker, Chief Executive of OPEN said:

“We’re delighted that Leathes Prior have agreed to be official co-partners alongside Adnams and Bitburger for our inaugural Oktoberfest event. Money raised from the event will be donated to the Open Youth Trust which will enable the charity to offer a diverse range of activities, most of which are free to attend, for young people aged from 7 to 25“.

To find out more about Oktoberfest at OPEN or book tickets for the event, make sure you visit their Eventbrite page. 

TaxAssist Accountants, the UK’s largest network of small business specialist accountants is celebrating the opening of its 200th Shop.

Franchisee Dave Forrester’s new shop in Bingley, West Yorkshire, hit the 200th spot. Dave, who runs two other shops in Keighley and Ilkley, looks after more than 400 small businesses across the region and with his team decided to open his third shop to meet growing demand from existing small businesses and new businesses starting up in the area.

The office was officially opened on Thursday 6th April by the Deputy Lord Mayor of Bradford, Councillor Alun Griffiths, who made a short speech and performed the ribbon cutting. The opening was attended by local councillors, as well as current clients, friends, family and local businesses.

Dave Forrester said: “With the business going from strength to strength in Keighley and Ilkley and a growing small business culture in and around Bingley, it seemed like the perfect time to lookout for a new conveniently placed shop. Demand for our services continues to grow and the new third shop gives us the opportunity to grow with it.”

“We’re delighted by the positive response we’ve had so far and would like to thank everyone who came along to our launch event, it was great to welcome our clients, dignitaries and representatives from the local small business community to our new offices and celebrate being TaxAssist Accountants 200th shop.”

James Mattam, Group Business Development Director, said: “We’re immensely proud of Dave and all of his team for opening their third shop and helping us reach a milestone of 200 TaxAssist Accountants shopfronts in the UK. Our brand continues to go from strength to strength and we continue to open more shops in other parts of the country. Retailing accountancy changed our business 15 years ago and we’re excited to bring more accountants on board and be a part of our future growth.

“Dave and his team have followed the model well and led the way in cloud accounting technology developments within their practices. The whole team understands just how important technology can be to help clients develop their business and at the same time make the accounting practice more efficient. With Making Tax Digital on the horizon, Dave’s practices are in an excellent position to help small businesses and individual clients to be fully ready to cope with the biggest change in recent times in how tax is reported and paid.”

The network, founded over 20 years ago has grown consistently year on year.  It now services more than 65,000 clients with a fee bank in excess of £42 million,  with over 280 shops and offices covering the UK and Ireland, as well as 6 branches in Australia with further expansion planned.

April 2017

Janet, the ultra-fast IT network, is now available from a second UK commercial data centre – the high security Norwich facility operated by MIGSOLV, a Norfolk Chamber Gold Patron.

This will enable small and medium sized businesses and public bodies in the East of England to work with a wide range of previously inaccessible markets, including many organisations connected to private government networks, in a move to boost the digital economy.

By providing a commercial Janet connection, MIGSOLV’s Gatehouse data centre becomes second only to Goonhilly Earth Station, the renowned satellite and space centre in Cornwall.

While Janet has been developed over the last 30 years primarily for academic and research institutions, this now means any small/medium businesses and public bodies can connect to the network by placing their IT in MIGSOLV’s data centre.

MIGSOLV’s Janet connection is delivered in partnership with high-performance network provider Next Connex.

The connection provides links into the highly secure Public Services Network (PSN), N3 NHS network and Police National Network, opening up a large public sector marketplace for small and medium businesses. This will be of particular value to companies on the government’s G-Cloud scheme, which aims to help them sell cloud computing services to government bodies.

Public bodies which place their IT in The Gatehouse, Norwich will also have access to a Janet connection – many for the first time – enabling them to work with a much wider range of suppliers and partners.

This move is a joint initiative between MIGSOLV, Next Connex and Jiscom – Janet’s commercial arm, whose remit is to broaden the network’s user base in order to boost the digital economy.

David Manning, Managing Director of MIGSOLV, says: “We’re thrilled to be only the second UK commercial facility to offer a Janet connection. It’s a prestigious, ultra-fast network – and a great fit with our Norwich data centre, which is one of the most secure in the world.

“Our Janet link opens up a vast new marketplace for companies and public bodies alike which choose our data centre services.”

Anyone wishing to find out more about MIGSOLV’s Janet connection and data centre services should call 020 3600 1000, email sales@migsolv.com or visit www.migsolv.com.  

Janet (originally the ‘Joint Academic Network’) comprises over 5,000 km of optical fibre and has over 18 million users. Its backbone runs at 100Gbit/s, with an interconnect capacity of around 40Gbit/s. For more, visit www.jiscom.uk.

Next Connex designs, builds and supports high-performance network infrastructure. The company operates its own UK core fibre network, providing services to systems integrators, service providers, IT companies and telco carriers. For more, visit www.nextconnex.com, or contact 01932 505 999

MIGSOLV operates The Gatehouse data centre on a nine-acre site in Norwich. The facility is free of terrorism and flood risks and incorporates rigorous security measures including access by iris recognition, CCTV coverage of every square inch of the site, microwave intruder detection and advanced fire protection systems. For more, see www.migsolv.com.

For more media information & images, contact:

Tariq Khwaja from TK Associates

tariq.khwaja@tk-associates.com

01932 224 212 

The Digital Marketing team at Tudor Lodge Consultants are delighted to announce that we are working with London-based property finance providers SPF Loans. SPF Short Term Finance have been providing a range of property loans for over 20 years including auction finance, bridging finance, development loans, agricultural and international finance and many other bespoke products.

With the property market worth billions of pounds and the bridging loan sector worth over £4 billion, there are many potential customers looking for all nature of property finance. This has helped form part of the basis of our work with SPF Loans.

What we have already done

SPF Loans were keen on revamping their existing website and as such have now launched a brand-new website. As part of this revamp there has been a plethora of work that we have completed. We started the main element of our work with in-depth keyword research around the service areas of SPF Loans’ service, using industry knowledge to target very popular and competitive keyword terms and online searches.

We have already provided SPF with 7 bespoke landing pages, full of useful and original content covering all their main service areas. These pages each comprise over 500 words of content about the topic area, answering relevant questions and providing detailed information around that topic area.

Furthermore, these pages have been designed to target specific searches via online search engines and have been provided with meta titles, meta descriptions and various H titles to ensure that the correct keywords are targeted and that Google and other search engines can properly read and crawl the website. These pages have been further aided by being provided with clean and keyword-friendly URL structures to cover every angle of Google’s crawling of these pages in their own rights as well as in part of the website.

Working with SPF’s development team, we have also helped the SPF website reach remarkable site speeds across both mobile and desktop platforms of over 90%. This continues to be extremely important in Google’s eyes as well as that of users of the SPF website as increased site speed allows for easier and more comfortable browsing which is rewarded handsomely by search engines.

In addition to the above work, we are continuing to work on the site structure, paying attention to individual pages on the SPF website to make sure that they are as user friendly as possible and that they take users on a desired journey through to the point of contacting the sales team at SPF.

We have already seen dramatic improvements in many keywords’ positions with the SPF website, which is extremely positive at this early stage of the works. We look forward to continuing the work with the team at SPF Short Term Finance and building on the already impressive progress in a very competitive industry.

Innovation Bridge, the new project to deliver expert advice and grants to innovative businesses, has appointed Norfolk agency Greenwood&Bell as marketing consultants. The scheme has launched with a new logo, branding and marketing campaign. Innovation Bridge is aimed at ambitious and inventive businesses in the East of England and, as there are many Chamber members who fit this description, it is hoped that they will take advantage of the scheme.

Innovation Bridge channels expertise from leading universities into businesses, helping them develop innovative new products and services. The scheme is led by Central Bedfordshire Council and the European Regional Development Fund are contributing £1.95 million, meaning the scheme can offer free advice and grants to firms in the region for the next three years.

Greenwood&Bell’s campaign leads with the headline “Need business growth? Get specialist support and grants at Innovation Bridge” and is supported by an illustration showing energy and light pouring from a university into a business, along with a new logo and identity.

Mark Greenwood points out that this could be a really useful scheme for Chamber members. He says “Many business leaders have projects that they would love to get moving. Innovation Bridge could help them bring these projects to market”. You can find out how the scheme could help your business by calling 0300 300 8272

The delivery partners are University of Bedfordshire, Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Suffolk. The project is supported by New Anglia Growth Hub, Signpost2Grow and Velocity Growth Hub

Greenwood&Bell: greenwoodandbell.co.uk

Innovation Bridge: centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/innovationbridge

 Freebridge Community Housing is encouraging local charities and community groups to apply for grants from their Freebridge Community Fund.

The fund provides local groups with the opportunity to apply for grants of up to £1000 and welcomes applications from a wide range of charities and community organisations whose aims include:

· Promoting health and wellbeing

· Tackling disadvantage

· Supporting local solutions to local needs

· Promoting community cohesion

· Developing sustainable and supportive communities

· Improving the environment for Freebridge tenants

The final decision on funding will be made by a panel of Freebridge employees and tenants.

Last year the fund awarded almost £6000 to six groups including the Docking Playing Fields Association, Home-Start King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, Methwold Parish Council, the King’s Lynn & District Group of the National Osteoporosis Society, The Pandora Project and West Norfolk Riding for the Disabled Association.

Chief Executive of Freebridge, Tony Hall, said: “Although our main role is to provide good quality affordable housing for people across the area, we feel strongly that we have a responsibility to play a role in supporting stronger, vibrant communities in West Norfolk.

“The Freebridge Community Fund provides grants to organisations on a very local level which we feel fills a need not met by either public funding of the more major charities.”

Groups that are interested in applying for a grant from the fund can make an application online at www.nofolkfoundation.com/funds/freebridge-community-housing-fund/

The application process for this year’s funding will close on Wednesday 31 May 2017.

POP UP: The Lovewell Blake, local producers will take over the entirety of Bethal street with their exquisite produce

With all this, plus live entertainment, a kids zone and more, the event is guaranteed to be packed.

Pure hosted its annual Norwich charity quiz night on Thursday 13 April, bringing local businesses and clients together for a fun evening which raised over £2,700 for Norfolk’s cancer charity The Big C.

The battle of the brains, organised by professional recruitment specialists Pure, saw 36 teams of four from organisations across the county pitting their wits against each other. The teams included people from Age UK, Tax Assist, Price Bailey and Kaplan Financial, and there was plenty of friendly rivalry on the night. The overall winners were a team from Anovo, with each team member presented with £20 Cinema City gift cards.

The event, held at the Sprowston Manor Hotel, also included a raffle to help raise further funds with prizes all kindly donated by local businesses.

Joseph O’Sullivan, Manager of Pure’s Norwich Office, said: “We’ve been running our annual charity quiz nights for eight years and they’ve always been extremely well supported. It’s a fantastic way for local businesses to come together, support a good cause and to have fun at the same time. This year our Norwich team has pledged to support The Big C for all our charity activity and we’re delighted to have raised such a wonderful amount for this exceptional organisation. I would like to thank everyone who attended, donated and contributed so generously to the event. We hope to see you all again next year.”

The Big C provides drop in support and information centres across Norfolk and Waveney. These are used by thousands of people affected by cancer every year and provide valuable information about diagnosis, treatments, side effects and recovery. The support also includes trained staff who can provide emotional help, support and complementary therapies.

Last year’s Norwich quiz night also raised over £2,000 for EACH. Pure’s annual quiz nights, held at all four offices throughout the year, are just one of the many charity events the professional recruitment specialists for the East of England run throughout the year.