Roger Kirk | Active Copier Systems - Active Business

21 Sep

The Active Apprenticeship Scheme

As the new academic year gets underway, we have taken the time to reflect on our successful apprenticeship scheme. To date six fresh faced apprentices have walked through our door ready to embrace, sometimes with a little persuasion, the working life.

Having successfully completed a qualification with us, we now have two members of staff who understand and work adhering to our procedures and systems, having had no previous experience. We are very proud of them. We currently have two new apprentices working towards their qualification.

The qualifications that our team have gained, or are studying for are:

NVQ in Warehouse Handling and Stock Control, and various Toshiba maintenance courses
NVQ2 in Business Administration & ICT level 1,2,3
NVQ in Business Administration

Dennan joined us in December 2016 and is now beginning his journey to becoming a field-based service engineer. To gain some insight, we asked Dennan a few questions about his experience of the Active Apprenticeship Scheme:

1. How did you come to the decision that you wanted to do an apprenticeship scheme?
I didn’t want to be in education anymore and wanted to get into work and earn some money.

2. What made you choose Active as the business to do your apprenticeship with?
I knew someone who had already started an apprenticeship at Active and she recommended it to me.

3. What were your initial thoughts when you joined us?
I liked it.

4. What would you say was the most difficult aspect of your training? Did you have any doubts?
The coursework and deadlines were the hardest part, the job training was far more enjoyable. I didn’t have any doubts.

5. Can you think of a moment that cemented your decision to becoming a service engineer?
Yes, when I accompanied the other engineers on installs and calls I realised that there was a great job that I could work towards. Active have encouraged me in this, even paying for my driving lessons and test!

6. What would you say to someone who is contemplating taking this educational journey?
Do it, you can earn whilst learning and its better than college.

04 Sep

Back to School

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

We can’t believe the school holidays are over!

We hope you’ve had a great time and have enjoyed the delightful British weather. We’ve seen lots of fun updates on Twitter…the UK scenery is second to none.

If you’re looking to have a fresh start this school year, have you thought about introducing new systems? Take a look at our previous blogs to see what we can offer, we don’t just do photocopiers and IT systems.

Our team are on hand to take enquiries and to answer any questions. Give us a call 01302 772988.

29 Aug

Tidy Work Environment, Tidy Mind!

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

The image used for this blog (above) is a client’s comms cabinet that had IT support from two other companies. The image below is the outcome of our work when we secured the contract.

Here at Active it’s not just about the hardware. We take a holistic approach to supporting your business.

Even if we don’t supply your equipment initially, we will make sense of your internal systems to help you. Not only does it look nicer, fault finding and resolution is made much easier to manage and allows growth as your company expands and systems change.

05 Aug

Did you know?

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

Some of our customers are surprised by just how much we do here at Active. Having built a great relationship with our clients we are sometimes asked “do you know anyone who can….?” Our answer is “yes, we can do that for you”.

In addition to providing & supporting photocopiers & IT Systems we do so much more. Here’s a roundup of the Active wraparound service:

• VoIP telecoms + broadband connections
• Structured network cabling
• Wi-fi
• Printers
• Plotters
• Managed print service
• Print control
• Print audits
• Document archiving storage solutions
• Shredders, inc GDPR compliant shredders
• Digital signage & displays
• IT Health Checks
• Advice & help in gaining your ‘Cyber Essentials certification’

Our aim is to keep your business Active. By streamlining your suppliers you cut out the ‘who does what’ element. As your business grows and develops it’s also easier to increase and adapt your specified needs as you go along, when you have one supplier you can trust.

If what you are looking for isn’t on the list, it doesn’t mean we don’t do it, we probably just haven’t been asked about it yet. Please give us a call and ask!

02 Aug

New System Install

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

We’re in the process of going live with our new software . Once complete it will be an excellent addition to our business.

In the meantime, please bear with us while we navigate through some minor teething problems.

15 Jun

Cyber Essentials Update

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

Cyber Essentials is a UK Government Scheme. It has been introduced to help businesses avoid common cyber threats which have dominated the headlines in recent years. We have been working with our clients to ensure a belt and braces approach to security in the run up to the new GDPR regulations.

We were delighted to receive this feedback from Family Matters Mediation:

The cyber essentials qualification was a requirement for the provision of the Cafcass programme, The Separated Parents Information Programme, which was awarded following a successful bid.

Director and course programme facilitator Juliette Dalrymple said “I am delighted that we have been successful in our bid. As part of the process we were required to obtain Cyber Essentials Plus Certification which means we are in an excellent position to manage the changes which will be implemented when the data protection regulations come into force in May 2018”.

When we were inspected we were one of only ten organisations to get the certification first time. This could not have been achieved without the support and help of Active IT Systems. Office Manager Claire Mawson commented “Robbie and Dan both took a calm methodical approach to ensure we were ready for the inspection. This approach was clearly effective. This is evidence that Family Matters’ IT with the support of Active IT Systems meets the most current IT security standards”.

If you are thinking about or would like to obtain a Cyber Essentials Certificate, please get in touch with us.

More information about Cyber Essentials can be found here on the official website https://www.cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk/

02 Jun

GDPR

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

The date for the introduction of the new GDPR rules has now passed. There is no need to panic if you don’t feel you are on top of it. The 25^th May 2018 was a defined starting point for the process, if you are starting to implement change you are already on course.

All organisations collecting, holding or processing personal information that can lead to a person’s identity need to be working towards compliance. You also need to be aware of the new rights of the people (data subjects) with regard to this information and how can you meet these rights. Some organisations are much further on than others. Most of the new regulations are just good practice. Organisations that keep personal data on customers and clients generally treat the information with respect and try to protect it, it is the formalisation of this which needs tightening up and documenting.

The process doesn’t have to be timely and complicated. Take a morning out to answer some simple questions, such as:

Where, when and how do you collect information?
What do you do with it? i.e. Who sees it, do you share it with other organisations?
How do you protect it? In the office, paperwork and electronically – do you need to review your IT systems?

The ICOs website gives access to some great tools. As the responsible body for enforcing these rules it is a great place to start. Achieving the Cyber Essentials Certification is another great thing to do, here at Active IT Systems we can help you obtain this.

We are also a business. It has been important to be able to separate the nonsense from fact on GDPR as best we can. As with other companies, we have also been swamped by offers from ‘specialists’ to help us implement the new regulations. Having done our homework we found that these ‘specialists’, when you read their terms, do not guarantee compliance. Nobody can, you won’t know until you are ICO audited.

Our advantage as IT and document solutions suppliers, is that the GDPR security side of systems falls into our area of expertise. This means we have had little to do as we are already Cyber Essentials Certified and have strict access controls in place. The other side of GDPR has been a journey of discovery, like all new regulations and rules.

At Active we have a large pool of great customers and suppliers who we have worked with. Combining our experience and skills we have been able to form a ‘GDPR Super Cooperative’ this has led to the production of a small GDPR toolkit which makes answering the simple questions above and beginning the documentation process simple. If you would like to join this cooperative or just benchmark your existing GDPR work, please get in touch.

25 May

Why bother if you aren’t going to deliver?

by Roger KirkCategories: Active

On 2^nd May 2018 we attended ‘The 2^nd Regional School Improvement & Learning Innovation Show’ at Doncaster Racecourse. This was hosted by Doncaster’s Teaching School Alliance, Partners in Learning.

Although we have been working behind the scenes and have consistently been attending training courses and events (to keep us up to date), we haven’t had the opportunity to showcase our business in this way for quite some time. The run up to the show consisted of brainstorming and marketing ideas. How could we get people to engage? What are delegates expectations? Having had numerous conversations with colleagues and our team, we decided to go for it, really go for it!

We had a huge display which filled a whole row. We had competitions, sweets and drinks to entice people in. We donated mugs to go in the delegates goody bags, networked with fellow businesses and ate our lunch with Head Teachers and School Business Managers. (Congratulations to Norton Infant School who won the £250.00 iTunes voucher for their school).

The day proved to be a huge success. We got the chance to introduce ourselves to leaders and decision makers, something that would usually take days, weeks or months to arrange, happened in one day.

This is the beginning of a new chapter for Active Copier Systems Ltd and Active IT Systems. We dipped our toe in and had an exciting, enjoyable day, there’s so much more to come.

With everything we do, we do it to the highest standard, after all…why bother if you aren’t going to deliver?

08 Feb