Meritec: Saving money for our customers
Meritec is very pleased to have just been awarded a significant contract by a FTSE100 company to provide Managed Application Support for a business critical payments system. The support contract will run in parallel with an existing contract to host the same system which currently runs to the end of 2013. While Meritec have been heavily involved in providing Managed Application Support for Local Authority Revenues systems for a number of years, we are now extending the scope of our support both in terms of the applications supported and the support provided. This particular contract includes a significant element of development support for on-going maintenance and enhancements to the system as well as the traditional application and application environment management.
Meritec is delighted to welcome a large authority in the North East of England as the latest user of its Focus on… Benefit Fraud e-awareness product. Benefit Fraud is estimated to cost the tax payer £1.5 Billion per annum and in the times of significant budgetary pressures it is vital that Council’s do as much as they can to combat this problem. The module quickly and efficiently raises awareness of Benefit Fraud amongst staff and informs them of their responsibilities should their suspicions be aroused. For further information please see www.meritec.co.uk/focus or contact focus@meritec.co.uk to arrange a free no obligation trail of the product.
Meritec is delighted to announce the continued use of its Focus on… series of e-awareness products by Brighton and Hove City Council. The authority will continue to use Focus on… Fraud and Corruption and its supplementary Management Edition for the next three years. Focus on… Fraud & Corruption quickly and cost effectively raises understanding on fraud risks and fraud prevention in the public sector. For more information on the product or cost effective pricing for multi-year licences, please contact focus@meritec.co.uk or call 0845 345 1155.
The new Focus on... LHA e-awareness course facilitates a basic understanding of the main principles of Local Housing Allowance (LHA) for benefits staff, stakeholders and landlords.
The new module has been fully revamped to take account of the April 2011 regulation changes and direct payment guidance.
*NEW* features include:- revamped exercises, automatic management information on learners performance, the ability to log in by department, improved admin facilities which make it easy to personalise the course - contact us on 0845 345 1144 or at focus@meritec.co.uk for further information.
Meritec has recently developed a Schools' Edition of its successful e-awareness product - Focus on… Fraud & Corruption. Its purpose is to quickly raise awareness on the types of fraud that occur in schools and how these can be prevented.
The product targets teachers, school staff, bursars and governors. The content consists of 8 chapters in total, including 3 spotlight chapters that describe the most frequent types of fraud. Typically these include internal frauds on Income, Procurement and Pay & Expenses, plus external frauds on leasing arrangements and from Phishing. Case studies are also used to exemplify actual frauds that have recently occurred in schools - contact us on 0845 345 1144 or at focus@meritec.co.uk for further information.
Having just successfully concluded discussions with a London Borough Meritec has won a contract to develop a solution to provide local access to historic Business Rates information currently held on an externally hosted VME platform. When complete, the solution will enable access to the suitable formatted information via their current Document Imaging System. Earlier in the year Meritec transferred the BRates system to their own VME Mainframe for temporary hosting to give time to agree and develop the best and most cost effective alternative solution. An element of the contract for the replacement solution guarantees that the Authority will continue to have access to the hosted application until the new solution is developed, tested and available.
Meritec have again demonstrated their Versatility and Flexibility by assisting a Council who had a need to address a backlog of technical Issues, absence of some key skills and temporary understaffing situation. The solution was to provide an on-site resource for 2 days a week for a period at a very competitive fixed price, with provision for additional support as required through a flexible Merits contract, allow draw down of additional time and other resources from the Meritec team as and when the need arose. The contract has been extremely successful and has just been extended to include some additional elements of support. One of the key requirements of the contract was to provide a review and tuning of the virtualised server infrastructure calling on Meritec’s expertise in this growing area of IT Support.
Recent extensions of existing Merits contracts have included additional days at one council to provide more regular and planned Security Testing. Rather than being delivered as a single test (which can result in a lot of issues to address at one time), Meritec’s approach through the Merits system is to carry out selected tests over a period of time, allowing the client team to address issues in a more manageable way.
A Borough Council has recently extended Merits support to continue provision of Application Support for their Oracle based applications, and Northgate Revenues and Benefits in particular. The Council uses Merits rather than contracting for a Managed Service (which Meritec could provide if required) because it has some in-house capability in this area but wishes to supplement this with third party support, particularly for those activities outside of the day to day support such as installation of releases and major upgrades. The contract does also of course provide insurance and cover when, for any reason, the in-house resource is not available (e.g. Holidays, Sickness and peaks in workload).
Meritec’s versatility was once again demonstrated in April when an issue with a clients communications links that was proving difficult to identify interrupted access to a business critical application hosted by Meritec. After two business days without access to the application the situation was becoming critical with no solution in sight. Fortunately, following a decision at the lunchtime of the second day of the incident that going into a third day without access was simply not an option Meritec was able to set up facilities at their Skipton offices to accommodate a team of 8 staff and have the facilities ready and working by start of business on the third day. The solution was resolved half way through the third day, but removing the pressure from the IT team was a major factor in resolving the problem in addition to saving the business the problems of having to deal with employees not being paid.
Meritec is nearing completion of a significant contract with a well known national motor dealer for the development of a bespoke Fleet Management Portal. The system will integrate with various backend applications to significantly assist the customer to further strengthen their respected position as a competitive and high quality supplier.
Meritec is delighted to have secured a major contract in excess of £155,000 to provide project management and project support services to a large UK Local Authority. We will provide more information in due course once press release and other formalities have been agreed with the customer.
Meritec is pleased to announce we have secured a very substantial contract to provide legacy services to a major household-name blue chip organisation. More details to follow subject to agreement of press release etc. The service includes provision of Fujitsu VME hosting and support for business critical applications and the contract will initially run for 3 years.
Nottingham City Council is the latest Authority to license both Focus on... Fraud & Corruption and the supplementary Management Edition. The former product will raise the awareness of staff on what fraud is; how to spot it; and what to do about it. Meanwhile, the Management Edition will target all managers with information that will not only address their e-awareness needs on fraud but will also enable their responsibilities for its prevention.
Our Meritec website has had a complete makeover. With easier navigation, and a cleaner look and feel. Please take a moment to have a look around, feedback and suggestions welcome!
Meritec is actively working with several Authorities helping them with procurement and preparations to replace their existing Pericles systems which will become unsupported at the end of 2010.
London Borough of Sutton is the latest authority to sign up for 3 products from Meritec's e-awareness portfolio. These are Focus on... Fraud & Corruption; the supplementary Management Edition of Focus on... Fraud & Corruption (targeting senior and middle managers); and Focus on... Benefit Fraud.
London Borough of Sutton is the 12th London Borough to license Focus on... Fraud & Corruption. In total, the product has now been successfully rolled out in well over 50 Local Authorities across the UK. In the difficult task of achieving "More with Less", the product is a proven vehicle for providing savings on current training budgets; reducing potential losses from fraud; and enabling essential governance requirements.
NetShare is pleased to announce the release of Shared Working Programme Office; a toolkit for managing a shared working feasibiity, design and implementation programme.
Visit; http://www.netshare.uk.com/Home/ProgrammeOffice for further information.
Logo.jpg "ASCB(E) ISO 9001:2008")