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 Signet is a well established business that successfully provides office administration solutions throughout the North East. Their main areas of business are recruitment and secretarial services and they pride themselves on providing a high quality service which enables them to establish and maintain client relationships that exceed quality and value expectations continually. The business recently achieved ISO9001 and is always looking at ways to enhance their service. In conjunction with the ISO9001, Signet also undertook a Customer Satisfaction Survey and was awarded “Diamond” certification achieving 90%. Clients and workers speak highly of the warm, friendly and professional atmosphere that Gail Fenton and Alison Burton offer.
At the start of 2008, Signet contacted Northumberland County Council. The County Council procurement activities were being centralised as a means to ensure best value for money for the public purse and to make sure that the authority was procuring within the law. This, though, meant that Signet was no longer able to win business opportunities on an ad-hoc basis, despite offering an excellent service for a number of years.
Undaunted, Gail and Alison set about learning the processes of how the public sector procures and with the help of Joanna Urwin and the Procurement Centre successfully completed their first PQQ. Gail’s reaction in an email to Joanna says it all, “We can't believe it & could not have got this far without you".
Gail & Alison.
Signet update 2010
Signet Secretarial Services has been awarded a place on the national framework of Buying Solutions - the government executive agency which manages suppliers to UK public services. Click here to read more.
| SLT Engineering: Case Study of a local business with a commitment to the local economy |
 Ernie Craig seen here receiving the NDI award for Training for Success 2008 from Dr Liam Fox MP Shadow Secretary For Defence.
SLT Engineering, who are based in Blyth, were established in 1996 and offer sub-contract precision machining and CNC Programming services to a diverse range of industries including aerospace & defence, automotive, hydraulics, sub-sea, medical and the food sectors.
With a total commitment to meeting and exceeding customer expectations, they offer a rapid response to their customers for small batch production work, delivered in the shortest possible lead time at competitive prices.
They are a AS 9100 and ISO 9001:2000 registered company with a management ethos of continuous improvement which is supported by investment in staff training and development, and backed by the award of "Investors in People" accreditation. The company is also a member of Northern Defence Industries.
Ernie prides himself on appointing and developing local people in his company. Fifty per cent of his workforce are from Blyth and the surrounding area and he finds his apprentices locally too.
His company benefits from shorter lead times – hence the name SLT Engineering and he sees the value to his business from developing a good quality local supply chain across South East Northumberland.
Ernie approached the Procurement Centre staff at a Blyth Business Forum event and discussed both his commitment to the local economy and also his needs as a business. This led to Ernie employing a new member of staff for two days a week to search the TenderTap system for new business leads.
Ernie says
“Having hands-on help from the Procurement Centre has enabled
SLT to have access to a large database of potential customers registered on the Tendertap system. Although the system gives information at a top contract level, by setting keyword searches it can deliver leads to the companies who are winning the contracts and where any machining is required, it allows us to identify who might be requiring our services. The tender tap training was given at our factory by the company who implemented the system and all of our questions on the set-up process were answered. “
Positive about procurement menu |
