Turnover up again!
I think you will agree that the
beginning to this year has been
particularly brisk and naturally
assuming that our coverage is good, I do
not see any reason why that should not
continue.
As you are probably aware, the beginning of our financial year is 1
September and I am delighted to report
that after the first five periods or
five calendar months, our turnover has
increased by just over £3.4million over
the corresponding period last year. This
equates to an increase of more than 19%
on the same period last year, something
which in itself is also a record!
I believe this illustrates just how well this Society is
performing. However, as I have written
so many times before, this can only
continue providing Dial-a-Cab members
give our clients the prompt, polite
service they require. It is very easy
when we are doing so well to become
rather complacent, believing that this
trend will always continue, but as we
all know this just isn’t the case.
We are busy because we are good at what we do, but should standards
fall then our work will fall with it! So
this is a gentle reminder; none of us
should take our ‘foot off the gas’ if we
want a year that has started so well to
continue in this vein into the future.
Whilst on the subject of how well we are doing, I put out a
terminal message a few weeks ago to
advise you that we had retained one of
our largest accounts after it had gone
to tender. As you know, we were sharing
that account with another taxi supplier
on an equal split basis, however, I was
informed just a few days later that the
client had decided to alter that ratio
so that we at Dial-a-Cab now receive 90%
of the work!
Naturally, that is something that I am particularly pleased about,
but please remember that this ratio can
be adjusted at a moments notice by the
client should our coverage begin to
wane, so the ball is firmly in your
court! |
New building update…Everything
seems to be going to plan with the new
building and we anticipate that we will
be making the move from Brunswick House
over the Easter weekend. By the time
this issue of Call Sign
reaches you, we should be just one week
away, but at the time of writing it is
still around three weeks and I must
confess that it still looks like a
building site to me! But I am reliably
informed that it should be completed
according to schedule.
However, completion according to schedule could still leave us to a
certain extent at the mercy of some
suppliers such as BT - and those of you
who have dealt with them in the past
will understand exactly what I mean by
that. Our fingers are firmly crossed!
And replacing
equipment…
We have decided that since we were
moving our infrastructure to the new
building, it would also be pertinent to
replace some of our current equipment.
As a consequence, our IT department have
had a particularly busy and worrying
time together with our colleagues in the
USA replacing some of our ageing
hardware-driven infrastructure with the
latest software driven mechanisms.
You may have noticed - although hopefully not badly - a change in
our signals as we go from hardware based
communication controllers to software
based IQ links. As you can no doubt
appreciate, this is the perfect time to
replace our infrastructure with the
latest equipment as we complete our move
to our new building. But, to describe it
as a very worrying and |
traumatic time would be a
gross understatement! Hopefully
everything will be completed with the
minimum amount of glitches, although no
doubt there will be some.
Change of roles
It has been decided that there will be a
change to a few Board Member’s
responsibilities. Allan Evans will now
be responsible for dealing with
complaints and Tom Whitbread will take
control of our fitting bay at Roman Way,
basically a reversal of roles.
These alterations will commence on 2 April 2007. I know Tom has
been dealing with complaints from time
immemorial, consequently, a change could
be considered as long overdue. I have no
doubt that both Board Members will treat
their new responsibilities with as much
enthusiasm as they have shown in the
past.
House of Commons
I am rather
sad to have to end yet another upbeat
Chairman’s report with some sad news and
that is that we have been unsuccessful
in our tender to retain the House of
Commons account. We have been associated
with the account for many, many years
but we must assume that they were not
prepared to accept our latest tender,
which contained higher fixed prices for
our drivers. The account has now gone to
the Radio Taxis Group and we wish them
well with it.
It may be rather late in the day to mention this, but when messages
go out saying that an account is in
danger because the coverage of some
trips isn’t good enough, it really does
mean exactly that. The loss of the HoC
account now proves that.
However, on the plus side, we have now captured the Nomura Bank
account, which as most of you know, is
situated in St Martins le Grand. Your
assistance in ensuring a good service is
vital…
Brian Rice
Chairman
Dial-a-Cab |
