This will be the first in a new series of blog posts where we introduce you to the people behind the products and services that are offered at Clydebuilt Business Solutions. Many of their names and faces will be familiar to existing customers already, as these are the people responsible for establishing our name within the industries we serve.
Without them, we simply could not function!
So, where better to kick things off than with Jamie Barr, our Managing Director, and problem-solver extraordinaire.
Tell us a bit about yourself
I was born and grew up on a farm south of Edinburgh. Two of my older brothers were obsessed by all things computer-related, and they clearly influenced my future career choice.
What is your job title and can you describe what you do?
I am the Managing Director – I am ultimately responsible for all the technical decisions in the company, and heavily involved in all support, project and development operations.
How long have you worked for Clydebuilt?
Over 25 years. After 25, it starts getting a bit blurry….
What is the favourite project or product that you have worked on with Clydebuilt?
Difficult to choose, but we did manage to bring a customer live with LocateIT during COVID, which given we couldn’t go on-site at all, was a pretty huge achievement.
Do you have a favourite thing about Clydebuilt?
The people – colleagues and customers. I am very lucky to have a great team around me. I also really enjoy developing relationships with customers – positive feedback from them means a huge amount to me.
What’s your drink of choice in the office?
Coffee. Black. No sugar.
What did you want to grow up to be when you were a kid?
I always wanted to help people, so I’d say a teacher.
What website do you visit the most?
Anything guitar-related, but particularly That Pedal Show’s YouTube channel.
What was the last book you read?
Major Dudes (a Steely Dan biography)
Where are we likely to find you outside of work?
Probably carrying out my “other full-time job” – chauffeur to my son.
Cyber security has become a regular news item in the media in recent years. From high-level politicians using personal email accounts to send confidential documents, to defence officials picking up unidentified memory sticks and plugging them into government computers, to streaming services and car dealerships leaking personal data of millions of customers. The types of incidents vary, but we hear of them occurring on an almost daily basis and no industry is being spared the pain.
The worldwide cost of cyber crime is estimated to reach over £8trillion by 2025 and cyber threats and risks are a constant threat to us all, both at home and in the workplace. The kinds of threat differ greatly, and those perpetrating them range from lone-wolf criminals to state-sponsored hackers, but we must all be prepared to guard against them and everybody needs to have a grasp of the basic principles of cyber security.
It is us regular users who remain the greatest vulnerability to the computer systems that we use, to the confidential data we store on our personal laptop, or that our organisation store on their network. Around 75% of successful breaches occur due to human error or negligence, mistakes that expose us to both reputational and financial risk.
With Safer Internet Day taking place today, what better time to ask the questions: how do we overcome these threats, and how do we ensure that we are secure and not exposed to such risk?
Leadership
Leadership is key to creating and promoting a culture of cyber security in the workplace, as the attitude of an organisation towards the subject plays a major role in how employees integrate it into their working days.
If those at the top of the organisation, and those in management, embrace cyber security as a priority and make sure this message is clearly communicated then it will be taken more seriously, thus enhancing awareness and mitigating risk. It is not realistic or fair to expect frontline staff to be motivated about cyber security if management are not committed to the mission.
It is mandatory that management at all levels build a positive attitude towards awareness and encourage the workforce to become enthusiastic about building a culture of cyber safety. Transfer of knowledge and best practice within the workplace is the number one way of doing this, and that can only be done by ensuring communication plans and education are in place.
Education and Training
Too often employees are caught unaware, giving cyber criminals an unfair advantage. Negligence allows hackers to use even the most basic techniques to gain access to your confidential information.
Put in place a training plan, hire an expert team, to provide your workforce with the critical skills that they need to combat those criminals. The training can be self-paced, and run throughout the year, and communication on any increased threats should also be provided to ensure staff remain up-to-date.
Ongoing training is key, with unscheduled simulated exercises being used to upskill employees and ensuring your company assets are safe in the hands of an educated workforce. Your workers should be able to spot suspicious emails and know where to report them to, and, especially in these days of working from home and workplaces being split between multiple locations, when to connect to VPNs and how to keep their portable devices safe and secure.
You do not want to be in the middle of a cyber attack the first time you think about it – you should be prepared and ready for it in advance!
Planning and Implementation
You should have a communication plan for when that cyber attack incident does take place. It should be created with the least technically minded staff as a priority, taking into account the applications that are most widely used and that contain the most sensitive data.
Strong passphrases and multi-factor authentication should be in place, and access should be restricted to only those who need it. The days of everyone in the company having the same passwords and access-level to applications should be long gone!
It is also vitally important that you know exactly what you are protecting and take an inventory of all the hardware and software that may be exposed – you can’t defend what you don’t know you have!
Planning cannot guarantee ultimate effectiveness against human error, but lowering risks and managing these mistakes is achievable and internal awareness can assist in developing a cyber secure culture in the company.
Creating a secure environment requires constant effort from everyone, and it is a key focus of the workplace that all employees know they are responsible for cyber security.
Culture
With training and planning in place it is important to maintain that safe culture, and build it into thinking and planning throughout, ensuring that it is part of how work is done.
Online safety best practices are everyone’s responsibility and security should be ingrained in all parts of the work environment, with those ongoing tests and communications becoming familiar so that workers are invested in the changes taking place.
A business must collaborate with every role, function, and department, in the organisation to combat the cyber threats, and the regular communication should be used to sustain the new culture. Posters, newsletters and reminders are just some of the effective ways in which important security themes can be instilled further.
Safeguarding your organisation against cyber attacks is a priority in this day and age, and one that must become part of the culture and identity of the workplace. This can only be done by keeping employees interested, engaged, and invested in the process, and when you do that, you can be sure that you are doing your best to defend against the ever-evolving world of cyber threats.
We are pleased to send you warm wishes at this wonderful time of year, when we are coming to the end of our busiest period (and looking ahead to the new year stock-takes!), and attempting to take a well-earned break over the Festive season.
It has been a rollercoaster year for all at Clydebuilt Business Solutions, as we continue to take great pleasure in having you all as customers, providing you with our products throughout the year, and also introducing you to our new Android Barcode Scanning system in more recent months.
Midway through the year, however, we were dealt a great blow with the loss of our colleague and friend, Stephen McIntyre, following a lengthy illness. Our customers will know Stephen well, and he is sadly missed by us all. We will especially remember him at this time of year, and look back fondly at the times we spent together.
As is standard practice each year, our offices will be closed between Christmas and New Year, closing at 5:30pm on the 23rd December and re-opening at 9:00am on 4th January. Any urgent requests during this period should be made via the usual support email or at our support contact page here.
Upon our return in the New Year the work will continue as always, as we look to continue our planned site visits and further work on our next generation TMS and WMS systems to run alongside the new Android scanning. Those Android installations will also continue, as we look to bring you all up to date with the latest scanning technologies.
Before then, there is just one thing left to do and that is to wish every single one of you all the best for Christmas and the New Year. We hope you all have a great time and we will see you in 2023 for another bumper 12 months!
Previous blogs have discussed the need for a Warehouse Management System and the points to consider when selecting that WMS. In between these discussions we also introduced our new Android Barcode Scanning system that aims to help in modernising your operation.
These articles can point you in the right direction in terms of implementing an up-to-date, modern, efficient warehouse, and that is something we will look at today: how you can bring all these things together to provide exactly what YOU require.
Talk of smart warehouses has been big in recent times, particularly as the last few years have seen a change in the way we all work, and a change in the demands that businesses face in all industries, not just logistics. However, with the rise of online working and shopping, and an “everything now” culture, speed and regular order updates have never been more important.
This is where using the latest technology comes in and the ability to be at the forefront of the industry, keeping ahead of the competition by implementing a streamlined and more efficient operation. There are several key steps, most of which we have covered already, and if you follow these your warehouse will be well on the way to becoming the best version of itself.
The number one priority for being “smarter” has to be implementing a Warehouse Management System. This will help increase your stock accuracy and consolidate all your data into one location, showing all your working, providing instantly accessible reports and helping you to plan ahead for the days, weeks, month, and even years, to come.
On top of the WMS, you will then want to add a barcode scanning solution, offering real-time updates to the placement and removal of stock in the system, increasing efficiency and helping ensure an accurate inventory. Not only will this help the system run more smoothly but the savings in time will ultimately lead to a happier and more productive workforce.
With a scanning solution running alongside a WMS, there should be “a place for everything and everything in its place”, as Benjamin Franklin is reported to have once said. You can use reporting to rank the items that are picked the most and the locations that are visited the most to put in place pickfaces to optimise picking operations.
Working alongside the barcoding and WMS, your warehouse will benefit from the addition of automated processes, further increasing efficiencies and future-proofing your operations. The scanning tools are an essential part of this, suggesting locations and picking paths, making picking faster, more accurate, and reducing human error. Communication modules can then update integrations and keep customers and suppliers informed of progress, and completed operations, with minimal user interaction.
A good Warehouse Management System and associated processes will allow your warehouse to develop and grow, evolving with the technology. A supplier who can work with your staff, and allow you to work together with your customers – current and prospective – in order to evolve and be more efficient and productive is a key element in developing and maintaining that “smart” warehouse.
The technologies we provide at Clydebuilt Business Solutions can certainly help you meet the steps and requirements set out in this short guide. If you wish to find out how Clydebuilt can help you fulfil your ambitions for a smart warehouse, you can send us a message, or give us a call on our usual phone number, as found here.
In a previous blog, we told you about the introduction of Android scanning to our product suite and emphasised why it was now being released and the importance of timing things correctly at Clydebuilt Business Solutions. With that in mind, we are actively looking to progress our software range, and one of the stages in that development is involving you, the customer, our partner in everything that we do.
As our valued client, we are always trying to provide you with the best possible service and products. We already collect feedback on an ongoing basis about everything that we do, but we are about to start our largest ever single undertaking in this respect.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will be contacting all customers, and this is the very first step on that journey. Following on from this, the management team are looking to visit customer sites in order to speak with you on a one-to-one basis and receive any views you may have on our software products and services.
As part of this process, and in advance of those visits, we will be contacting you by email, and by good old-fashioned regular mail, in order to deliver an easily-completed little survey that will allow you to give us some written ratings and opinions. And when we say “easily-completed”, it really is a short form that can be finished in just 5 minutes, depending on how much you have to say.
We thank you in advance for your help with this. We appreciate the time you take to provide us with feedback and suggestions, and we will be actively using it to improve the services we provide you.
So, remember, keep an eye on your email and your letterbox, we’ll be in touch very soon.
Now that we have looked closely at the Pros and Cons of each option, it would appear that the perceived costs, along with specific business functionality, are likely to be the key factors in deciding to go with a bespoke development.
In reality, however, the costs very quickly mount up, resulting in a far larger investment than originally thought. A previous example we gave illustrated a low-end cost of a single developer, and this would obviously increase if more people are employed to complete the project in a timely fashion.
We highlighted the scenario of working to a specific business brief that ultimately leads your company down a dead-end. The worst-case scenario may be that business objectives and working practices change before the bespoke development is even complete, or as it is completed; where would that leave the business?
The truth of the matter is that a software company offers off-the-shelf packages for a reason. The product rarely becomes defunct, as the life-blood of the software house is the production of new technologies, and internally they will invest in research and development to ensure that their product(s) remains useful for clients.
A good software vendor will thoroughly analyse your current practice, and make modifications to their existing package where applicable, giving you a solution that truly fits in with your business. Added to this is the safety in the knowledge that the software system has the flexibility to adapt as your business does; again, these developments are standard for the software provider and will cause minimum trouble for you and your staff.
Of course there should be an emphasis that you must choose your vendor well, but with the right software company providing your solution you should be able to rest easy that you will ultimately get a successful result.
The festive closure period will be from 24th December 2022 till the 3rd January 2023 inclusive. Re-opening at 0900 on 4th January 2023. Urgent requests for support during this period can be madehere.
Following on from our last discussion regarding the Pros and Cons of Developing a product In-House, in this blog we will look at the specific positives and negatives that can be attributed to buying a solution off-the-shelf.
Pros
The first major plus point with buying an “oven-ready” package is simply the fact that it is tried and tested; you know that it works, there will be support provisions in place, and you won’t have to worry about being the first to try it out.
There is no need to “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to these things, there are already specialised software systems that have already been designed to cater for the problems that you are looking to address.
Before you purchase, as with the first point, it is already in place elsewhere so you will be able to go and view the system in operation in a similar working environment.
The provider of the package, the software house, will very probably bring considerable experience with them that you can then rely on
You can’t take forever to put systems in place, and the implementation time will be shorter when buying off-the-shelf, measured in weeks rather than months, or even years.
Cons
In terms of what you require and what you will get, it is possible that the package could be bloated with unnecessary features (although could they be necessary in future?), yet may fall short in some critical areas.
There is a risk of the vendor being slow to react to market trends or reluctant to adapt the software to your particular needs.
If you have other systems in place there may be potential integration issues with the new software.
Support and Maintenance costs can be expensive (although you will also have to support and maintain when developing in-house).
Finally, when purchasing from an external provider you are putting a lot of faith in that one company. Some may say that this is a case of putting all your eggs in one basket, while others may tell you to just make sure they are deserving of that confidence you are showing in them.
While these are definitely examples of problems you may experience with some off-the-shelf systems, we should say we don’t believe they can be associated with our own products. We may well be biased, but our years of experience in the industry have ensured that we do tend to know what our customers are looking for.
The festive closure period will be from 24th December 2022 till the 3rd January 2023 inclusive. Re-opening at 0900 on 4th January 2023. Urgent requests for support during this period can be madehere.
In the previous blog we discussed the development of Warehouse and Transport Management Systems, and started to make comparisons between developing in-house or buying off-the-shelf. Following on from that we can now look at the pros and cons of keeping your development work internal.
Pros
As mentioned previously, there can sometimes be the view that an IT department is an expensive fixed cost, and that by keeping development within the company this will give the IT team “something to do”. Depending on the company, there may indeed be an element of truth to this idea.
The development costs are perceived as being cheaper, as there should be less money being drawn out of the company account.
One major plus point for many is that they will have “total control” and not be influenced by a software house, or other third parties.
Where development is of strategic importance, having “full” control may be vital.
The client can define and should get exactly what they require.
The software should be built to fit in with existing in-house systems.
The interface should be familiar, although that is not our general experience.
Cons
Spending valuable money on developing a system from scratch is almost like “reinventing the wheel”.
Clearly defining the project and specifications is an involving task. Both operational and technical staff will need to be involved, using up valuable hours – this is not only an IT department job!
Tight deadlines and time constraints could mean that time is not on your side.
How “right first time” do you need it to be? The reality is that complex projects can take twice as long and end up costing several times more than the original budget!
Your IT team might not have the specific skill set required for certain areas of the development.
If you bring in outside specialists, they might not have relevant warehouse experience or, in the worst case, be working to their own agenda.
Debugging issues can be prolonged.
Developers can turn into an in-house technocracy with whom managers may find it difficult to argue.
The programmers are not likely to have learned lessons from others’ mistakes or benefit from others’ good ideas.
The system may have little inherent flexibility and scalability.
The process can drive a company further down a unique, or dead-end, development branch and into dependency on a particular developer, or development team.
Modular upgrades are unlikely to be available.
There is an over-reliance on one department to produce the goods.
Finally, a major question that you have to ask about in-house development will be “is it actually cheaper?”. Let’s assume there is a £40,000 yearly cost for employing a single developer, so you will pay £200,000 over, say, a five-year product life. For that same £200,000, assuming 20% per annum support and licence charges, you could buy and maintain a £66,000 software package. And this does not include the opportunity costs of delaying implementation of a solution whilst design, programming, testing and debugging takes place.
The pros and cons of any software system obviously have to be weighed up before any installation takes place, but here we have laid out those related to an in-house development, and in the next blog we’ll go over those belonging to an off-the-shelf purchase to allow for a full comparison to take place.
The festive closure period will be from 24th December 2022 till the 3rd January 2023 inclusive. Re-opening at 0900 on 4th January 2023. Urgent requests for support during this period can be madehere.
Naturally, as a software development company that operates solely within the logistics market, we believe that in the majority of cases the most common sense and logical action is to purchase Warehouse and Transport Management Systems “off the shelf”.
You may well think “they would say that, wouldn’t they”, but if you do read on, we believe you will find the following discussion to be well balanced in its views, and justify why we believe that to be the best decision in the vast majority of cases.
A company will usually develop in-house where the issue to be addressed is trivial or where their requirements are viewed internally as complex, or perhaps unusual – a “we do things differently” mentality. Alternatively, maybe the IT department is seen as a fixed, or “sunk”, cost to the business and using them to develop a new software solution may be a “cheaper” option.
If we ignore the former and move on to the possibility of the complex and unusual, the realisation of software projects range from the totally in-house development through to the totally off-the-shelf purchase.
With a product developed completely internally, the requirement is defined, analysed, programmed, maintained and developed using the company’s own resources. In contrast, with an off-the-shelf commercial offering, you will buy and effectively have to work with the package as it comes out of the box. In reality you are least likely to find total solutions for logistics software in either of those extreme positions.
In many cases there will be a large degree of external involvement in achieving the eventual outcome. External consultants, system analysts, programmers and project managers might be used to deliver a ground-up in-house product, while no sophisticated commercial product is likely to be useable without some configuration and tailoring to meet a customer’s specific needs. This is often in close co-operation with internal IT staff, and it should also involve working with the relevant operational staff. These are elements of best practice that we always follow at Clydebuilt Business Solutions.
More realistically, the comparisons are the perceived benefits of Bespoke Software versus those of a Tailored Commercial Package. The crux of the matter comes down to the hope that the core of the chosen pre-packaged product(s) will be tried and tested, more robust and providing a stable basis on which local workflow procedures and processes may be built. This means that even if the given methods and mechanisms that augment the core are initially less than required, the system can function, probably very successfully, whilst additional changes are made. It is the combination of this strong, stable and very capable core, with the flexibility to tailor and add functions and procedures quickly, that characterise the modern commercial logistic software package, such as those that we provideat CBS. By comparison, in-house developments can rarely afford to build in additional capabilities that are not immediately required and, of course, some additional capabilities may not even be thought of.
Further developing the in-house system with new, even minor changes, can be slow and costly to deliver.
The commercial product on the other hand is likely to be the result of a variety of users in different environments all bringing their needs and requirements to the product design table. There may well be generations of design involved, making it possible that future requirements, currently unknown or vaguely known, are already catered for or easily added. With an external package you may also be entitled to any upgrades and improvements that are made to the product along the line, with negligible or no extra cost.
None of the above touches on the problems of being locked-in to external consultants that can follow a bespoke program or the difficulty of supporting and amending a system when the original programmers have gone and the level of documentation is often inadequate for others to take on the development without a huge time commitment.
There are pros and cons to both sides of course, with regards to where your software products are coming from, and these will be discussed in further detail in the next blog.
The festive closure period will be from 24th December 2022 till the 3rd January 2023 inclusive. Re-opening at 0900 on 4th January 2023. Urgent requests for support during this period can be madehere.
POINTS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?
PART IV
PUBLISHED 17 JUNE 2022
Making Your Mind Up
There are many factors that you will take into consideration before making up your mind and selecting the WMS provider that you wish to work with:
System features – will the system deliver the functionality that you need?
Implementation – how easy will it be to implement, and what steps are taken to minimise disruption? Be absolutely certain of one thing – there will be change!
Understanding – Are you comfortable that the supplier understands what your business requirements are, and has a sound grasp of how you would like to move forward?
Faith – Are you convinced that, over and above the details conveyed to the supplier, they have the capability to support your investment into the future?
Tried and tested – what was the response from existing users of the system?
Personal relationships – although not an obvious factor, this is actually a key issue; will the company work in partnership with you to deliver the right results, and do you think that you will be able to work together? The nightmare scenario is when the sales people leave and the implementation team arrive to ask “what is it you want then?” Trust us when we say we know of this happening first-hand!
Support – Are there adequate resources from the supplier to ensure that you will be fully supported?
These are all things that we at Clydebuilt Business Solutions have been proven to deliver consistently over the years. Of course, there will be many more variables to be taken into consideration, but most of these should be accounted for along the stages of the decision-making process. Once you have established your need for a new system and start inviting responses from prospective suppliers you will already be forming opinions on both the system on offer and the company supporting the system.
It is easy to get carried away with the marketing hype surrounding some of the product offerings, but it is imperative that you stay close to your project and ensure that you are selecting on a “need to have” basis as opposed to “that looks nice”. Once implemented, a Warehouse Management System is a business-critical piece of software that can have significant benefit to your working operations, and, as such, your decision should be made upon the final result.
It can be daunting delving into the world of choice and, with so many companies making all sorts of claims, it is no surprise that it becomes a difficult decision. The best advice to give is to ensure that you have explored all avenues with your potential supplier and you will find that you will make the right decision based on all of the options above.
Finally, use your common sense, if you understand the needs of your warehouse operationally, you will see if what is offered will work on the ground and help the people there. At the end of the day, the objective is delivery to the end customer, real accuracy, getting it right first time, every time, and improving internal efficiencies so you are avoiding unnecessary costs. In jargon terms, this all equates to adding value to the bottom line!
The festive closure period will be from 24th December 2022 till the 3rd January 2023 inclusive. Re-opening at 0900 on 4th January 2023. Urgent requests for support during this period can be madehere.
