Spring has indeed sprung, British Summer Time has arrived, and longer, lighter nights are well on their way! It’s been a long time coming but during our tradtioanlly quiet period, between Christmas and Easter, we decided to implement a brand new database system. This will hopefully make us more efficient in the office (not that we weren’t any way!) and involved transferring all our storage and current customers over to the new database, as well as directing new customers straight to it. Our regular customers may have noticed a slight change in our invoice and quotation layouts but that should have been all. It has had the odd glitch but nothing the lovely team at EOS haven’t been able to help us with and, I have been reliably informed that they are mainly PICNIC errors (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer!) Although it has taken time, and quite a bit of work, we are confident it will make out (work-related) lives easier.
On a much sadder note, we have had to say a reluctant farewell to Mark Bowler from our sister company, Broadland Removals, after he lost his battle with cancer. Our thoughts are still very much with his family and friends. It was decided that Broadland Removals would continue to operate out of Lowestoft under the guidance of our directorship and we welcomed Julie on board in the earlier part of the year to assist us with this. So, many of you will see both Alan Cook Removals vehicles and Broadland Removals working together.
Whilst our work force at Alan Cook continues to grow and thrive we have also had to say good-bye to a few people. One of our lovely girls from the office has recently left prior to the birth of her twins (double the trouble!), currently her replacement is looking nervous but with a great deal of customer facing experience we are expecting her confidence to soar. One of the lads has left pending his journey into the great unknown – AKA Australia. Two others have gone in search of other adventures so we’ve hired and welcomed two new recruits into our modest, yet growing, family fold.
Although the Boss will deny this, our quiet period hasn’t been! Quieter than the summer months, it’s true, but not as historically quiet as this period normally is. So, we are looking forward to the challenges the remaining seasons bring, quietly watching an ever growing fleet (two new additions already this year) and thriving workforce with much anticipation and great expectations.
