It’s been a long time since i posted an update, that is not to say we have been quiet, we have been working hard in the background getting ready for our general product release. I’m going to tempt fate and put the date here in back and white, we will be launching www.flexmms.com on the 22nd of February. No turning back now.

We are well into our final testing, even if I do sneak a new feature or two in along the way. Its really hard to say “its done” as there are so many things we can do with the system, but we have met our targets for initial release, even surpassed them in some places so we are ready for release.

Its amazing how truly flexible our frame work is. Part of the initial release is our own management processes to manage our clients. FlexMMS is not a CRM system, it was never designed to be one but we decided to use it internally as such, we dropped the Health and Safety, HR and Equipment related modules, built a couple of new modules for support and license management and we are up and running. I’m not just saying this because we built it, but there is no management process we could not build on FlexMMS. I’m excited to see which client will give us our first challenge to really push the boundaries and see how far FlexMMS can go.

Product release is the 22nd of February and we will be at the FM Ireland expo in the RDS, we are at stand B20 if you want to drop by and say hello, we would be delighted to show you what FlexMMS can do.

We will also be giving away an Apple iPad at the show, so saying hello could end with you going home with nice present.

We’ll do our best not to open it and play with it before the show, honest

A new study by University of Minnesota sociology professors Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen used longitudinal data collected from 608 employees of a white-collar organization before and after a flexible workplace initiative was implemented.

“Our study shows that moving from viewing time at the office as a sign of productivity, to emphasizing actual results can create a work environment that fosters healthy behaviour and well-being,” said Moen.

CGA Software can help with improving your workplace flexibility. Our FlexMMS, our modular management system is designed to allow employee’s to be productive from anywhere at any time. We will even help you sleep better! Employees participating in the flexible workplace initiative reported getting almost an extra hour (52 minutes) of sleep on nights before work. What more could you want from a software system.

I recently attended a series of talks hosted by ITAG. Two of the presenters were Geoff Thompson of Experimentus Ltd and Graham Thomas, Independent Software Testing Consultant on the subject of product testing. Most of the companies there were large internationals being represented by individuals responsible for improving or introducing better testing in their projects.

I spoke with some of the representatives afterwards and one thing that struck me was the challenge they experienced while introducing change in their processes and communication style – especially when the processes have a large catchment area or were designed externally and implemented on the inside only when the ink was dry on the design. It seems that many large processes begin by design but don’t allow enough flexibility for adaption – unless the problem case is recognised in most areas netted by the process. It’s worth noting that any ‘problem’ processes companies find themselves with now usually began life as an asset – at least in some context.

We’re looking at our own internal processes at the moment and we’re lucky to be in a position to change anything that doesn’t address our internal requirements as well as the needs of our clients very quickly. We are in the business of changing requirements and a growing client base with diverse needs. I’m glad we named our flagship product Flex because it reminds us that one of our many strengths here at CGA is our ability to adapt, that we live in flux and even the best internal systems can be re-examined as conditions change.

Its amazing what changes can take place in less than an hour. I was busy planning out my week when it was brought to my attention that I was required to pack my bags and head across the ocean to meet clients  in order to finalise plans for implimenting our Human Resource Management Module as well as some custom modules.

It is part of the joy of international business that you never know when you may need to hop on a flight. Needless to say I’ll be out of the office next week but Alma will happily deal with any queries while I’m away.

I’ve been looking for a nice name plate for the door of the new office and I really didn’t want the standard name plate you see in most office buildings so in my hunt for something funky I came across the option below. I think it will suit our business and more importantly our personalities down to the ground!!

Now i just have to wait until it arrives!!

While doing my usual reading of safety related software this evening, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of discussions on forums and on blogs looking for safety data or safety related management tools in Excel format. Have we not moved beyond Excel? Don’t get me wrong Excel can be a powerful tool, but at the end of the day it’s a spreadsheet. It’s a human resource heavy application, it requires manual entry, manual updating, the logic processing is limited and reporting can be even more limiting.

When are companies going to start looking at the Excel sheet and say, “We can do better, we deserve better”. There are many companies out there building systems to manage, and they do just that, they manage. Less administration = more productive staff. The safety industry is an administration heavy industry, we all know it and we have to accept it, but the way we look at safety employees needs to change. A safety officer sitting in an office doing paperwork is not going to spot the hazard in the work place before it becomes an accident. Safety Officers need to spend more time on the ground and not in an office, in my opinion anyway.

While working directly in the safety industry I always had a running joke with my clients, the day they saw me in a suit there was trouble. Let’s get out of the office and get back to the job at hand. Bring the paperwork into the field. This is one of the main reasons we are going to the lengths we are with RFID and handheld technology. We believe this technology will greatly reduce the administration time required to provide a greater level of reporting, superseding most current best practices for less effort, less cost and even better, allow more work be done from field level, where the primary activity of the company is taking place.

Over the next month or so we are going to outline our full system here on www.cgasoftware.com and we should have a full live demo active before the end of the year. However to see the full strengths of our system it will have to be seen to be appreciated and we will be more than happy to demo it. If your interested in finding out more about where we see the future of safety management systems sign up to our mailing list or drop us a mail and we’ll put you on the priority list for when the product hits the market in January.

George

Today is day one of a two day move. Thats right CGA Software are getting a new home, we are moving into GMIT’s Centre for Innovation in Business. I say day one as we have no internet connection yet and an office without an internet connection is not much use to an software company!

However its still a big day for us and it will be nice to be in a centre with other emerging companies. We’ve started to meet the neighbours and there are some very nice people in there, we are right next door to eMedia who are doing some amazing stuff with medical apps for iPhone.

There are loads of companies in the centre and I’m sure we’ll meet more as time goes on. I’ll get a few pictures up once we make it more like “home”, for now we just need internet!! Tomorrow hopefully.

Well we finally got rid of the old 2 hour website and our new site is live. Take a look around and let us know what you think.

The page is still only a place holder and a teaser for whats to come, once we get into the final stages of testing we’ll release more information and a live demo of our products. Check back for more info.