Well – not really – ‘cos it’s not his bike, but he’s certainly breaking it in for someone as he’s undertaken a ride from Tiptree to Carlisle this week. That’s right – Carlisle which is very much up north and in a hilly part of the country, from Tiptree which isn’t on either count!

google tells me it’s 311 miles, but I know from first hand experience that doesn’t tell the tale of the lumps between here and there, however it’s all in the name of a great cause, namely Teenage Cancer Trust. So as I write this up we know the man is nearly there, which is particularly amazing considering how last minute he left his preparation (although he does at least have youth on his side), but if you’re reading this and would like to pass some financial reward for his aches and tiredness then please do so here: http://www.justgiving.com/colutct  

And here are some snaps from when he set off:

Happy and smiling and with very fresh looking legs

Dale and his comrades on saddles

Now there are plenty of things that we should be shouting about in the name of self-promotion, but as we’ve been so busy with our nose down and delivering I think we’ll just put up a snap shot of some of the clients we’ve been working with and some of the nice bits we’ve been perfecting for them and then I’ll come back to fill in some more detail on some specific projects later.

So in no particular order (well, that’s not true, I’ve alphabetised them, so that’s very much a particular order isn’t it – but you know what I mean) for the past 12 months we’ve been mostly:

- Admiral : apart from building the site (working in conjunction with their Empl. Comms Agency – ThirtyThree) there’s also a nifty Group Interview Calendar working behind the scenes that brought some massive efficiencies and helpful MI to the telescreen process for the recruitment team.

- Andrews : a pretty new addition to our stable, this facility has a neat post interview feedback collation function to help HR  support managers across the Estate Agency network with their recruitment activity and delivering the best possible candidate experience.

- Ashley Kate : long standing client for whom we were delighted to create a mobile website to compliment the site we built a few years back

- BMIhealthcare : another careers site that we host completely, we’ve been doing some neat elements working with the team to help reduce their recruitment spend pretty significantly. Our most recent system enhancement is bringing their onboarding online – and whilst it’s still early days (as I type this) the signs are good that this will bring significant business efficiencies.

- Ceredigion County Council : making job search and apply facilities appear “as one” with the client’s site is something that comes second nature to us, but as well as stepping into the Public Sector this project offered the opportunity to further evolve our language switching functionality (first delivered for one of our China based clients) – and we’re pretty pleased with how complete a solution this now is. Client’s chuffed too.

- Clarks (North America) : having delivered the UK Clarks recruitment site we successfully pitched for the North America business. Now Clarks have a joined up international offering with distinct North America content as well as supporting Language switching. Other features behind the scenes include: eSigning (electronic signatures – provided by EchoSign); background check provider integration (provided by Creative Services Inc.); post interview feedback collation; distinct workflows for different parts of the business (inc. store level access).

- Greater Anglia : now this really is bringing us up to date – launched just a week ago we were very proud to work with another business where we’re big consumers of their service (others include: Clarks; Joules; Lloyds TSB; Majestic Wine; Monsoon Accessorize (me not so much Monsoon ). The careers site itself was built by one of their retained agencies (Jacob Bailey) and we then provide our legendary seamless integration with a system that also has: scored application forms for Drivers; Internal Careers Portal with distinct application process for Agency workers; an automated check and block (within specified time frames) of applicants to specific Regulated Roles; Vacancy Authorisation; Offer Authorisation; Line Manager Interview Feedback Collation. But best of all – I got to have a go on the proper train simulator

…  and that’s where I’m going to leave it for today. I’ll update within the next week what the last 12months looked like in terms of clients H -> T and then, as I say, may well come back and pick up some specifics on some of the projects – after all, if we don’t blow our own trumpet etc etc.

A month ago it was a great opportunity to ‘Do something funny for money’ on behalf of Comic Relief. Now as a client of ours we couldn’t very well let that go without doing something, so a challenge was set that for every person in the business who did something funny, or baked, we’d make a company donation – and if everyone did something then we’d round it up.

The week started early when Amie (Arnie to her 3D MarComrades / HARBOURites) burst in on the Wednesday looking like something out of a psychedelic version of Desperately Seeking Susan – and rather than baking she brought soup to sell (which was particularly lovely!). But so taken aback were we by the early appearance of this “vision” we completely forgot to take a picture for posterity – although she was that comfortable sitting there dealing with clients all day in that get up I have a feeling we’ll be seeing it again at some point (if indeed it’s not just what she wears at the weekend!).

Fast forward then to the big day – Friday 15th March.  Here are some of the things we got up to:

• Some fancy (dressed) baking – although not all the bakers are in shot (notably Justin’s Mum!!!).
• Jared – ummm – well – that’s Jared.
• Just some PHP devs hard at it.
• Me (Alex) getting ready to go to two client meetings in London in my PJs (with a child who thinks she’s Bonnie Langford in front)
• Rob & Daniel just doing a user training session with a couple of clients at SITA (or is that Jessie J??!!)
• and Graham had a New Client meeting, so erred on the side of conventional but added a pretty garish tie (which amusingly got more strange looks than my outfit when we did a joint client meeting in Camden ).

But then as we approached the end of the day we realised that, well, we were one person short of the full participation requirement for maximum donation. Tony, beloved founder and CTO, he who generally bakes something on a regular basis, had  brought nothing to this party. What to do, what to do, what to do? Thank fully Steve had an idea of what to do with his panic lunch time creation of a proper Cream Pie – see for yourself the results, and what saw us donating over £220 to Comic Relief:

Quite unlike Smashey and Nicey we really don’t like to talk about it, but at the same time it’s an important part of who we are and something we sometimes make an external commitment to do (e.g. our regular Christmas donation) – so it’s important that people who know about our stated intentions know how we’ve followed through on it.

So – whilst we’re still in “catch up blog” mode – here’s what we’ve done in the past few months:

- we “bought some bricks” to help build a ramp to improve access to a local Scout Hut.

- our now regular Christmas donation spot saw over 600 people help us decide on where to donate, so thanks very much for that – and the result was :

• Macmillan Cancer Support : £300
• Air Ambulance Trust : £225
• Anthony Nolan : £225

- we are fortunate enough to work with a great bunch of clients, but some of them really leave us agog. One such lady is Laura (from BMI Healthcare) who gives up some of her holiday to go and do some amazing “on the ground” work in Uganda. It really is quite humbling and we felt it was the least we could do to provide some money for her to go put to great use – read about her trip here.

- And then there was Comic Relief (another of our clients) – but I’ll update on that as a distinct post next  :o)

We try to take nothing for granted, least of all our clients and certainly not in this economy, but we’re particularly grateful that we find ourselves in a position where we can donate to some very worthy causes – and as long as we continue to stay in business then we’ll ensure that part of who we are grows with us.

The reality just hit hard – it’s now been over a year since I last blogged. I don’t know whether that’s ridiculous / embarrassing or just … well… what it is.

I’m certainly not making any apologies for being flat our delivering some great HARBOUR stuff  and focussing on delighting our clients (reckon we must have the best retention record of any ATS!), but as someone with a background in marketing I know how important maintaining a blog should probably be.

I do know that I started 2013 thinking “I really have to make time to write something – even if it’s just a line here or there”, but here we are in April again and this is the first time I’m forcing myself to overcome that blogging inertia. How the flipping heck did it get to April??!!!

Believe you me the silence hasn’t been for a shortage of things to talk about. And it’s definitely not because we’re no longer in business. Makes me realise that whilst I appreciate in the past we have been accused of seemingly working to actively hide our light under our collective bushel, for anyone paying any attention to what we’ve actually been doing you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re actively working to bury it – which is very much NOT the case :-]

So let’s take this micro post as a resetting of the clock. It starts again here – and as we steam towards our 5^th birthday I’ll fire up some updates over the next week or two from the last year to bring any readers up to date, but also please take this as an apology if it’s a little out of order or I forget something.

In summary though: it’s all good – & watch this space, there’s more to follow. Promise

One day there’ll be time to update people on what we’ve been up to. No really. ‘Cos there’s loads to tell. But the longer I don’t get round to it that’s becoming the problem – where the heck to start?

There’s the small matter of completely re-engineering and radically transforming  the Clarks recruitment process (ClarksJobs.com – nice site built on our CMS too) with some VERY smart bits within that supports their Line Manager population – oh – and I need to tell you about the really cool calendarisation of telescreen interviewing we’ve done for Admiral (AdmiralJobs.com – again all hosted by us). Then there’s a pretty site our ATS is seamlessly underpinning for OvoEnergy as well as another CMS & ATS site for Omnifone. I also mustn’t forget to make a big fuss about our homebuilt mobile version of the Monsoon internal careers portal (tied in with an internal poster campaign resplendent with QR code) and a particularly nifty way we’re about to enable BMI Healthcare applicants to partially apply from a mobile (‘cos the system knows they’re on a mobile you see) from which they then get a reminder to come back and fully submit their application by uploading a CV (although recruiters could progress without if they wanted). Petrofac is a nice little site and another China based campaign site for a new client Tiandi to add to the portfolio too. Ooooo – and we’re very pleased with ourselves over our latest Cost Per Hire reporting that’s tied everything up for Forward.

There’s definitely other nice stuff and clients I’ll forget to mention though. hmmmm.

Anyway – should also tell you that we’ve recruited a newbie in the form of Jared – he’s a junior Web Dev. And we’re still very keen to recruit someone like him with a few more years under the collar (although we’re very picky and really are struggling with the quality TBH) – so if you know an out-and-out deep coding, LAMP stack loving, PHP dev and they’re in the North Essex or Reading/Newbury area then be a love and send them this link would you -> VERY good PHP people needed

We also sadly lost a team member (c’est la vie etc etc) – but have picked up another along the way, so can’t wait for Alex (great name ) to join us as our new and sparkly Project Manager  next week.

However we’re also on the look out for someone really good to come and bolster our Account Handling team (not least to free me up so I can write proper business blog updates!) – so again, if you know someone who might fit in and can get passionate about delivering exceptional customer service (and knows where Tiptree is), then fling ‘em this link if you’d be so kind -> people people with a thing for the web & an eye for detail.

Well – there you go. A kinda-sorta-ish update plus a plea for some great people as we continue to go from strength to strength. Anyway – this isn’t getting the paying clients work done is it, so it’s back to the grindstone and hopefully it won’t be too long before I check back in – fingers crossed to tell you how pleased we are to have more hires on the horizon

Well I’ve never written a blog post at c.37,000 feet before, but this seemed an appropriate time to reflect. I’m currently sitting on an American Airlines flight to Boston and watching the film ‘New Year’ which in itself is gonna get some serious reflection going anyway (well – no doubt helped by a couple of small bottles of complimentary Merlot

So other than an overly sentimental (but perfectly harmless & quite enjoyable it has to be said) movie there are a number of other reasons to have a peep back & little look forward:

1. We’re screaming in on the end of year 4 of this little ‘ole business : and goodness gracious me, what a ride it’s been. Let’s put aside that we’ve just lived  through the worse depression since the 1930′s (or are we still living through it? I’ve given up watching 24hr news channels as I believe they’re as bad for your mental health as smoking is for your physical health and should come with an appropriate health warning) so 4 years and still here is something to celebrate in itself  I reckon. Probably write up more on that in about 6 weeks time though

2. We’re in the process of sprinting past the double figures threshold in terms of employees: yup – as I write this we’re just over a week away from welcoming on board a new member of the client facing team and perilously close to expanding our dev team too (there’s been a lot of “frog kissing” of people who really don’t get close to cutting the PHP mustard TBH, but we’ve finally got some decent looking prospects). It seems to me though that it doesn’t matter wether you’d producing sprockets or screwing on oojimaflips, in most instances it’s who you employ that makes a business. We “do software”, but without the best people to code it, the right people delivering solutions and then attentive & empathetic support we may as well pack up right now. Whatever your business it’s the people (or lack of them) that can break your business and as virtual as the world seems to become it’s very much people who will always be at the heart of any success. Here’s to learning lessons hard learned over the past few years, to not letting those lessons make us too hard hearted and to continue hunting out and then bringing on the very best people we can get our hands on – our future success depends on it.

3. This trip could well represent a significant step up for HARBOUR – or not of course, but it still feels pretty big to be doing our first North America instillation. This at a time when our Asia partner is seeing some significant growth themselves & investing in a sales push, so who knows, maybe, following on from Tesco & Microsoft in China, in the year when the world comes to East London it’ll be the year when we really step into Global service provision proper.

4. I’m 40 at the end of the month – nuff said. And no – no big bike or little sports car. I’ve often said that 3DMarComms is my mid life crisis – so here’s to whatever that may mean

So think that’s just about enough reflection for now. Just wish that the film didn’t have SJP in it – still, have to say that life and business is pretty good even with the odd horse face spoiling the view

“Goodness me.” As we approach the end of the year at Mach 2 then that’s probably the politest way to describe the past year. I’ll almost certainly reflect more philosophically over the Christmas & New Year period, but for now I’m just going to list some of the most recent work we’ve been turning out (in brief), just in case anyone’s passing and interested – you never know with these blog type things do you

乐购 (know who it is?)

What – you’ve not heard of them? Think you’ll find you have. 乐购 are, as I now know, Tesco in China. Anyway they’ve got some pretty big plans over there and needed some pretty big hires to help with, well, planning it all – step in HARBOUR ATS via our partnership with Oxus (China based Employer Branding experts). Built on our China based server (all the better for fast local connections of course) it’s a simple facility and launched with 5 senior level vacancies – language switching and ‘Apply with LinkedIn‘ (excellent to get those airport lounge job surfers) functionality to boot: tesco.hrinbox.cn

Tesco.HRinbox - China recruitment

Glam’ing it up

Many many many years ago I remember a very long trip from Portsmouth Poly to play Pontypridd Poly  in the Poly Cup on a typically Welsh weather kinda day where it was P’ing down. Think we lost (so I was probably P’d off before getting rather P’d myself – which was what it was mostly about anyway ). Either way it was nice to return on a sunny day a few weeks back to finalise a really nice win this time – building (what is now) the University of Glamorgan an Applicant Tracking System. Challenges on this one were making sure that our usual seamless integration could happen with a very complex in-place nav set up, but then also creating seamless interfaces for 2 further educational institutions (Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and Merthyr Tydfil College (although Merthyr will go live at some point in the future)) that came under the same HR team who, understandably, wanted a single system to administrate all.

We love something to get our teeth into (as, I seem to remember, so too did their prop I came up against that day :-] ) : jobs.glam.ac.uk & jobs.rwcmd.ac.uk

Glamorgan University & RWCMD job search pages

and an FA final for us

Now some clients have nice offices. Others less so. But I think it’s hard to beat having your meetings at Wembley Stadium (and that’s said even as a Welshman! Although I was there in 1999 for this). Nice careers site put together by BlackBridge (who were also clearly blown away by the stadium too) underpinned with good ole HARBOUR ATS bossing the midfield (perhaps – football metaphors really aren’t my strong point :-s ). jobs.thefacareers.com “Back of the NET!”

job search page/section - FA careers site

So – that there was some of our November delivery. Fireworks from beginning to end really

I won’t even count up how long we’ve been waiting for this little launch – but suffice to say we stopped holding our breath about this time last year.

But this is a client who wanted everything just so (and why not). They’ve also been busy themselves in rebranding and moving offices and the like. Sometimes there are just more reasons why something can slip down the to-do list than would force it to the top (particularly if what was there already wasn’t all that broken).

Anyway <cue fanfare> – we’ve made Ashley Kate (market leaders in HR Recruitment) a new shiny site that is now open for business. We think it looks pretty nice as it goes (and yes – we would say that of course, but then we do take extreme pride in a job well done every time), but built on HARBOUR CMS and with some simple but effective back-end functionality and integration with their existing candidate database it’s nice to step out of our usual stuff and build skills and experience elsewhere every once in a while

Hope you like – they’re a really nice bunch too and seem very knowledgeable about their specialism, so if you’re looking for your next job in HR then go have a peep and drop them your CV  :-D

Things have been busy here at HARBOUR HQ.

Hell – things have been REALLY busy! But there’s no complaints (well – other than from my wife a bit ) – particularly in the current economic climate we do know how good it is that we are seeing very positive growth (I stop short of calling us a “success story” just yet, but as we approach the halfway mark in our 4th year the signs are looking promising ).

Anyway – it’s been a full on couple of months with a couple of really big projects and many many littler ones – but each needing a good share of attention and loving to get out of the door and then look after whilst it, and the new users, bed in.  I will post again (probably fairly soon) about some of the recent work, but what’s also important to us is never losing our  focus on those clients that have been with us a little while as well. I’m a bit hard on us in regards to that – and I never want to take for granted that we have a better supported facility than any other ATS vendor our clients have worked with (or so they tell us). There’s always room for improvement and when there’s some particularly all consuming delivery going on it literally keeps me awake at night worrying that we’re not servicing our existing clients well enough.

So with all that said – you can’t believe how cheered I am to get forwarded a screen grab from within a closed group on LinkedIn where one of our clients has just posted the following answer to the question “Does anyone have any advice or feedback on systems they have used in the past, both good and bad?”

“Recently we renewed our ATS. Having experienced many of the big names we opted for Harbour – Bespoke to your needs by http://www.3dmarcomms.com/. I would highly recommend this system and the post implementation support.”

So thank you Craig at Yell – I really am beaming with pride for the guys and gals here. We’re not perfect, but by god we work hard to be the best we can be and make sure HARBOUR grows to be the best ATS on the market, but at all times with the best support that there is!