Is an IRMS worth it?

AXLR8 provide special IRM systems for

  • Freedom of Information,
  • SARs (GDPR requests such as access or rectification) and
  • EIR (requests under Environmental Information Regulations)
  • Appeals
  • Complaints
  • Data Breaches
  • and many more

This article and accompanying spreadsheet explain how you can measure the difference a system makes. That means you can calculate how much it costs your business ever month that you do not have a system!

Maintenance App

Maintenance App

Check out the new version of our maintenance app for Android and Apple phones and tablets.

As you and the team walk around your facilities you can see-snap-send.

  • See: notice a fault and log a repair job
  • Snap: take a photo
  • Send: upload the details to the maintenance team

The maintenance team will have manager access and allocate the work to someone (internal or external if it requires specialist knowledge or equipment). Then you can see when it is repaired and also view and “AFTER” photo along side the “BEFORE” photo you had previously uploaded.

Watch the video.

Please see this article for more details

AI developments

AI developments

AI can help us with all sorts of work. We have been looking for about five years at how we could integrate the power of AI into AXLR8 product lines. Here are a few examples.

  • One simple success came from batch OCR reading of visiting cards brought back from a trade show or trip. It works really well with competing offers from MS, Amazon, Google and others. The offers are provided on a Freemium basis. Last time we checked you could use 1000 searches a month before hitting a paywall. Nowadays, however, more utility when entering data into your CRM comes from customer enquiry forms on your website or AXLR8 Import Admin for, e.g. your LinkedIn contacts.
  • The exploration of using AI to help with SAR redaction was mixed and we will come back to that in future. For now, however, I would describe the results as worthy of a Khaby Lame reactions TikTok video.
  • ATS (applicant tracking systems) seems a good area. Applying AI to recruitment strategies could really speed up onboarding staff for rapid deployments or growth. We are also looking at spotting issues with vetting and rights to work.
  • Optimising staff journeys and bookings for shifts in security, field marketing, hospitality and counter cover where we have large data sources to earn from is proving an interesting area of study.
  • We have seen some success with selecting funders but none more than an experienced commercial finance intermediary.
  • The next stage of our marketing functions would be if they autogenerated content and knew and could learn from e.g. campaign timing. Most of our clients need quality with low unsubscribe rates in their mailings so care would be needed. Can you spot one of our blogs that was co-written by ChatGPT?

We will see how it goes. If you feel an area of our products could be automated, please let us know.

Web CMS market share

Why is this important? It matters because using a more popular platform can provide access to more tools, skilled exponents, experience, and integrated plugins and functions.

AXLR8 have provided may web integrations for 20 years. We have moved from HTML through Dreamweaver into Joomla, Drupal and latterly WordPress. Likewise for e-commerce platforms and many other functions we have moved with the times (but staying a little behind to trade reliability and ecosystem for new whizzy shiny things. This has given us a “hinterland” and the experience and skills to deal with any integration whilst moving to the platforms as their popularity grows and wanes

Our latest web plugins (for example in Job advertising Boards as part of our ATS) are now all built around WordPress. This CMS has a dominant market share now. We recently were asked to help with a Drupal project and have some integrations with Joomla. I always perceived these CMS platforms as very good but lost in history. So what are the market shares in CMS and who is growing and falling?

The request to help a team plug our API into a new Drupal basee public dislosure log for FOI queries for a local authority yesterday sent me off researching market footprint and also cross checked against  this table for CMS usage. Both independent sources seem to confirm the dominance of WordPress.

W3Techs

This link shows WordPress with about two thirds of the market. The rest range down from about 5%. There were suprises for me and I consider myself quite plugged in to this market. For example, Ithought WordPress must be 80% but is falling (65.5% to 63.3% in the last year from March 2022 to March 2023). Wix, Squarespace and Joomla are growing slightly. Drupal and Shopify are falling. The latter really shocked me as I see it everywhere nowadays.

WPBeginner

This reference has some interesting stats. For example, they estimate 34,896,678 live websites using WordPress. The tiny fall in WordPress website marketshare mentioned above may just be a momentary slowing of the overall growth reported from 55.3%-64.2% between 2011 and 2022.

Choosing WordPress

WordPress websites will continue to be the most common platform for AXLR8 to work with this year and next. However, like all giants, it has its critics – especially for security.  I think this reputation is largely down to three things.

  1. The popularity attracts hackers like it attracts users, developers, etc. to, say Microsoft desktop products and servers.
  2. Its users are notorious for setting insecure passwords. Please use a complex three word password over 12 characters including numbers, upper and lowercase and symbols.
  3. People do not invest time or money in updating the free plugins with new security patches. As an example, you can probably get domain registration, hosting and support for £30/year or less for a WordPress site. If your support company does the security updates, you may need to budget £50/month.

Be realistic about #2 and #3 above and you will have all the benefits of WordPress and peace of mind on the security front. Do not be taken in by developers offering proprietary solutions promising they are more secure.

If you need any smart data systems behind your Website site, please call AXLR8 on 01344 776500 to speak to one of our consultants.

See-Snap-Send

See-Snap-Send

AXLR8 Maintenance App

Check out this video showing how it works on the mobile app and also in HQ office where jobs are managed.

The AXLR8 Maintenance App is perfect for reporting safety problems or just logging items for repair in your school, hospital, hotel, stadium factory, plant, power station, refinery or any facility.

It works on an app and the fault reporting is as easy as See Snap Send. You notice a problem (broken window, slip hazard, etc.) take a photo and hit send.

Then the central system takes over and a manager can allocate someone to fix it, deal with subcontractors or allocate it to site staff, insurance claims, prevention, risk and accident register and photo evidence of completed work alongside the pictures in the original report.

Dayholi 360 degree 8k video live streaming

Dayholi 360 degree 8k video live streaming

Had the great pleasure to meet up with client of more than ten years, Fjolla Holzleithner at Jaks in Kensington yesterday for lunch.
Her team were over from Austria setting up the 360 degree Live stream 8k video feed and I was able to trial it myself. The detail is stunning and the applications are endless for brand marketing. You could see the cellars where your champagne comes from or visit the forest where your perfume started out in nature.
It could help with any number of other business goals. For example one of the demonstrations was of a large festival. I felt as though I was actually there. Imagine the applications in crowd steward safety training. I saw the live 8k streaming of ice hockey in Graz (Austria) in 360 degree surround vison and sound. What a tool for event directors who can be in several places in real time.
The Dayholi roadshow is in London till 23rd Feb if you can make it. www.dayholi.com

I know. 8K 360 deg video live streaming across Europe should be impossible. However, I saw it. I guess they have special pixies in their hardware.

Cyber Essential Plus 2023-4

AXLR8 are delighted to have achieved Cyber Essential Plus again this year. The standard has risen due to an increased international growth in cyber threats. So AXLR8 have also had to work even harder to meet the challenge.

Thanks once again to our team at Right Cue who have advised us and helped us raise our game and improve internal processes and systems to be better prepared.