As year 2001 drifts rapidly into the distance, it takes many memories with it including the ramifications of 11 September. For us, 2001 was our best ever trading year. This is a fantastic result and we thank all our customers for their involvement and support.
The year included a number of significant business events. The major upgrade by regional power company Seeboard was one; they now operate their compliance management CDM systems over 6 distributed businesses. Their health & safety documentation solution uses our Multi-Site ToolKit™ together with our Away From Base option for laptops.
A major new customer, a local government organisation in London, has now started their pilot installation of our CDM solution. Included, is the training of several dozen personnel in all aspects of CDM, the addressing of compliance issues, including non-compliance by any part of the business. The CDM training is being carried out by our partner Callsafe and is an excellent example of us working together to provide a total CDM solution.
Bradford MDC, having been with us for 6 years, have doubled their installation of our software and now run our CDM compliance solution across their entire organisation split over several sites.
Our developers once again came up with the goods by re-qualifying as MCSEs. This is Microsoft's prestigious qualification that allows us to install and support their latest solutions. Our portfolio of business partners has expanded to include major businesses in the UK that want to do business with and through us. Yes, 2001 was a great year for us. But I have to tell you, 2002 our seventh trading year, will be even better!
Our plans are now completed for the rollout of what will undoubtedly be the most comprehensive management compliance package for health and safety anywhere. As the links below will explain in due course, our new product will be known as 'ToolKit™ CS' to direct users to its core function; managing compliance to health & safety regulations through their organisation. ToolKit™ CS will allow integration from standalone PC to Workgroup to Enterprise environments in any business. With better, faster Internet connectivity in place at Ai Solutions, we can support and deliver better applications including hosted solutions; these options will be introduced as our product rollout plan takes place.
The world is changing fast. September 11 saw to that. Technology has lessened the need to travel with video conferencing. Our solutions will lessen the need for paper, manual filing and wasted time and resources in the documentation of health and safety. This will apply to CDM health and safety plans, health and safety files, asbestos registers, asbestos survey information and of course, risk assessments. Our new on line networking facilities will allow us to improve the support services we can offer too, which will become even more important as users become familiar with the use of on line services such as cdmuk.com and other hosted services.
We will have revised our web pages below in a few days time. Please take time to review them and see how we can help you comply with the latest health & safety legislation from the HSE. In the meantime, please make sure we have a note of your personal e-mail address so that we can advise you of our product updates and offers as they are rolled out.
We are currently starting a customer visit programme to see our customers either on site or at our offices. This programme will take several months to achieve due to the resources required. Our objective is to discuss on going customer compliance requirements and explain the new product options that are to be released. More than ever, we recognize that we need to stay close to our customer needs and listen to how they want to manage their compliance with health and safety legislation. If you need to see us early in our programme, please call!
In addition, we are offering an afternoon where any customer can visit our office for a free training session - see below - and have reissued our upgrade policy ready for the new ToolKit CS product - see below.
We are continuing our series of open training sessions for CDM ToolKit™ users at our Leighton Buzzard headquarters. The dates for these are listed here.
Each date will have a similar format. Places are strictly limited, so please call us if you are able to take up this offer.
We have an established upgrade policy by which any of our customers can upgrade to the next version of our product for the difference in price between what they have already paid in license fees and the price of the new configuration. This has been seen to be a fair policy over the many years that it has been in place.
We intend to continue this policy for the new ToolKit™ CS except there will now be a minimum charge of 20% of the new configuration price for all upgrades. However, customers who purchase our products from 1 Jan 2002 will be automatically upgraded to ToolKit™ CS products as they become available and without additional charges and they will be offered additional benefits as the product options are released.
Our business partners continue to be a major strength in our portfolio. With them, we are able to deliver the benefits of the synergy that has been developed over time. We have some major players in our portfolio, testament to the fact that we have worked together with them over many years to bring the best possible solutions to our customers.
Our web site will reflect these changes as soon as the details are available. So please, make sure we have your e-mail address.
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