Welcome to the Brighter Connections Group Newsletter!

We are delighted to share our first Group Newsletter which is designed to provide a positive overview of our three group companies, the positive feedback we have received from those who engage with us and the expanding portfolio of business-led services, solutions and people we have that can add real value to the businesses of both clients and prospects. This comes after lots of hard work, research, listening to customer feedback, meeting many people face-to-face and refining our business to ensure we hit the sweet spot for our clients. With all the investments made, we are confident that 2018 should be a great year for anyone looking to enhance and elevate their business. We are here to offer great choice, great value and great service; we hope to hear from you!

At a topical level, clients tell us that security, productivity and business continuity are three of the most pressing areas for management focus, investment and action and this is reflected in our content. We ourselves are launching our first ever e-commerce portal with a range of value-added solutions and services available on a “click to buy” or “click to enquire” basis and backed up with face-to-face events too. With some of our new pay-as-you-use cloud software acquisitions, we have attracted business from as far away as the USA and we welcome our new international clients to the Brighter Connections Group.

With Christmas approaching, we would like to thank everyone for their business and wish everyone a Happy Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Lots done, lots to do…

Darren Stringer, Managing Director

Welcome to Issue 1

Acquisition of Metis Software—Professional Services Automation

In September, Brighter Connections Applications & Analytics Ltd acquired a cloud-based, software-as-a-service professional services automation (PSA) application called Metis, now known as Brighter PSA (powered by Metis).

If your business is in the knowledge economy, then Brighter PSA can help you maximise profitability. This is achieved by bringing together time, expenses, budgeting and pipeline data into one single, purpose-designed, easy-to-use place and by providing actionable insights into this data.

If you are using multiple software products or spreadsheets, which do different jobs and don’t talk to each other, Brighter PSA can make life simpler by giving you an unrivalled view of where your business is at, and where to take it, from as little as £20 per user per month.

We are supporting the current user base and are attracting more users, both domestically and internationally, including Chicago USA, through the enhancement of the application with greater integration of analytics functionality; this is becoming increasingly important in days of greater self-sufficiency and lean and agile workplaces.

Brighter Connections Information Technology Group

December 2017 Volume 1, Issue 1

Latest News

Brighter PSA Offers the

Following in One Place:

• Time & Expenses Tracking

• Sales Pipeline Tracking

• Job Control

• Resource Planning

• Management Dashboards

Inside this issue:

Brighter CRM 2

Tableau Data Analytics:

Event Review & New Event 2

Business Continuity Breakfast

Briefing—Deeside 2

Cloud Telephony 3

Retained IT Director |

IT Manager Service 3

Office 365 Backup – Backupify

from Datto 3

New Group Brochure & Website 4

For further information, please go to www.getmetis.com or call our sales team on 03707 551515 or 01244 288281 to arrange a free, no-obligation demo.

Half the Price of Other CRM Solutions & Twice as Easy to Use!

Brighter CRM is built from 34 years of CRM knowledge and expertise and is currently available at an offer price starting from £20 per user per month for the cloud version (an on-premise version is also available).

An increasing number of customers are now subscribing to Brighter Connections Cloud CRM. Compared with other CRM solutions from major companies, Brighter CRM is approximately 50% less expensive and, based on customer feedback, twice as easy to use!

As well as being built, hosted and supported in Britain, Brighter CRM offers a clean, clear, easy-to-use, uncluttered and intuitive user interface where functionality and key information are not buried beneath layers, multiple clicks and different screens. It can also be customised to suit your business requirements, it can integrate with many business apps like Sage, QuickBooks, Oracle, SAP and SQL and has an advanced reporting suite with highly-visual data dashboards.

You can find out more here or please call 03707 551515 or 01244 288281 and a member of our sales team will be happy to arrange a free, no-obligation demo.

Business Continuity: Plan for the Unexpected

On Friday 9th February 2018, we will be running a Business Continuity Breakfast Briefing at the Village St David’s Hotel in Ewloe, Deeside, close to the Brighter Connections Managed Services Offices.

Learn how you can reduce risk and keep your business up and running in the event of unplanned downtime and protect against data loss. We can help you plan for the unexpected by covering such areas as:

Endpoint Protection, Cloud Backup as a Service, Office 365 Backup, Email Continuity & Protection and Cloud Telephony.

If you are interested in attending, please call Simone on 01244 288281 or Claire on 03707 551515 for further information. Alternatively, you can register here

Brighter CRM

Business Continuity Breakfast Briefing—Deeside

Tableau Data Analytics: Event Review & New Event

In November, Brighter Connections Applications & Analytics hosted an event in partnership with Tableau Software at the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester.

Based on feedback received on the day, the event resonated very positively with attendees as regards how they can use Tableau to see and understand their data.

Steve Coleman, Director at Brighter Connections Applications & Analytics, delivered a demo showing how Tableau can help drive operational efficiency and Simon Dixon, MD of Hatmill Ltd, spoke about how Hatmill have successfully used Tableau to unlock the data in their logistics operation.

We will be re-running the event at The Tetley in Leeds in early February. If you are interested in attending, please contact Claire Phillips on 03707 551515 or email claire@brighter-connections.com

Page 2

Latest News

Cloud-based telephony provides significant advantages when compared to more traditional on-premise solutions and, when combined with Unified Communications, significantly enhances the way in which your organisation, it’s people, customers and suppliers can communicate and collaborate. Many businesses have legacy telephony solutions that are ageing and expensive to maintain. A cloud-based solution offers significant cost and functionality advantages, can be paid monthly and can often cost less than a traditional replacement; it eliminates the need for ISDN line rental and, rather than a traditional cost-per-minute billing model, offers all-inclusive billing packages (similar to those you get with your mobile provider). Our solutions are highly available and provide the flexibility for people to move between location and, regardless of the size of your business, provide all of the features that are available to large enterprises. You can extend the reach of Skype for Business so that, as well as using it as a way to communicate with your company, you can use instant messaging voice and video to collaborate with partner organisations. Using our visual data analytics package, we can also do a cost-saving analysis on your traditional telephony solution compared to cloud-based one. If you are interested in finding out more about how Cloud Telephony could benefit your

organisation, please contact our sales team on 03707 551515 or 01244 288281

More and more businesses are relying on Office 365 to get things done and, whilst Office 365 does include some basic restore capabilities for lost data, we can offer a more comprehensive backup solution.

• What if a user accidentally deletes or overwrites a file?

• If an employee leaves your company, can you prevent their files from leaving with them?

• How can you protect your organisation from app outages, misconfigured workflow or even ransomware attacks?

We can help protect you from these issues with a comprehensive Office 365 backup solution to make sure your Office 365 data is secure, easily recoverable and protected.

If you think this is something which would be of benefit to your organisation, please contact our sales team on 03707 551515 or 01244 288281 for further information.

Cloud Telephony

Office 365 Backup— Backupify from Datto

Page 3

Volume 1, Issue 1

Retained IT Director | IT Manager Service

With the expansion of the Brighter Connections Group, we now have a number of key individuals who have the knowledge, experience and skill to provide our clients with IT Director & Management capability on a retained basis, from one-off engagements to more frequent schedules such as monthly and quarterly placements.

We can assist in many areas such as:

• Governance, Security & Compliance,

• Business Continuity Planning,

• Workforce Productivity

• Digital Transformation.

If you have specific needs, such as those above, or any other areas, please call our Sales Team on 03707 551515 or 01244 288281

Edgerton Villa,

22-24 Edgerton Road

Huddersfield

West Yorkshire

HD3 3AD

Phone: 03707 551515 (Huddersfield Office)

Phone: 01244 288281 (Deeside Office)

Email: react@brighter-connections.com

Twitter: @YourITPractice

The Brighter Connections Group are pleased to announce that we have updated the

Brighter Connections group brochure which can be downloaded here.

We have also updated our Group website which can be found at:

www.brighter-connections.com

The site has been refreshed and includes updated content on the 3 Brighter

Connections Group Companies and our full product and service offer as follows:

• Brighter Connections Ltd

IT Infrastructure Solutions

• Brighter Connections Managed Services Ltd

Cloud Services & Complete IT Support

• Brighter Connections Applications & Analytics Ltd

Innovative Software Solutions including highly visual data analytics, CRM

software, professional services automation software and mobile

workforce management solutions

We have some great events planned over the next 12 months and details of any

current events, along with a registration form, can be found on our Events Page.

You can also keep up-to-date on all that is happening in the Brighter Connections

Group on our News Page as well as viewing our portfolio of award-winning partners.

We have included some fantastic testimonials on our home page from our clients –

any further comments would be greatly appreciated!

We would also warmly welcome your feedback, at any time, through our feedback

forms which can be found in the “Contact” area of the site – all feedback is

reviewed and acted on in our quest for continuous improvement.

Brighter Connections Information

Technology Group

I hope you have found this issue of our newsletter both informative and useful; if you would like to know

more about any of the items covered in this newsletter, please contact :

• Your Account Manager on 03707 551515 (Huddersfield) or 01244 288281 (Deeside)

• Darren, Claire or Kathryn at our Huddersfield Office on 03707 551515

• Email us: react@brighter-connections.com

• If you would like to suggest content for future issues of this newsletter, we would love to hear

from you. Please email marketing@brighter-connections.com

We hope you have a very happy Christmas and wish you all the best for 2018.

Darren Stringer

Get in Touch!

www.brighter-connections.com

New Group Brochure & Website

Ground Floor, Holywell House

Parkway Business Centre

Parkway

Deeside Industrial Park

Flintshire, CH5 2LE