Energy Title
Transport Title
Public Sector

Support Deal Signed with Telecom Giant

cwWe are proud to announce that we fought off strong competition from UK and offshore competitors to further extend the applications support work that we undertake for Cable & Wireless. We have added an additional 95 systems to our support service. And this is a superb win that builds upon our proven expertise and ability to deliver what we promise to Cable & Wireless. The systems will be supported from the UK over the next three years and we are looking forward to developing further our strategic partnership with this prestigious multinational telco.

“The strong working partnership we already hold with Amor Group, as well as their professional and comprehensive pitch and proposal convinced us that they were the most credible choice in delivering this project”

 Simon Peacock, Head of IT Operations Support, Cable & Wireless

 

Commenting on the win, Andy Corkhill, Sales Director said “We are delighted to further strengthen our relationship with such an important client as Cable & Wireless. Our continued success in securing new, and extending existing business, with companies of the quality and stature of Cable & Wireless is down to the responsiveness and high quality of the work that is consistently delivered by our teams, making us the first choice supplier for customers in our target markets”

 

Total-ly Great!

totalAnother Amor Group contract is in the bag, providing additional Information Management (IM) support to oil and gas giant, Total E&P UK.


This project supplements our existing document management service for Total, and is one of several new projects that the company has underway in the region, including the pioneering Laggan-Tormore development, West of Shetland. Amor Group is providing a team of IM specialists to govern and manage information flowing between Total and engineering contractors involved in fabrication and commissioning. Amor Group’s involvement in this project is crucial to the Energy heavyweight as we are overseeing the necessary IM measures to keep the project on track and working to maximum efficiency. The IM team are focussing on pipelines, subsea production system, gas processing plant and overall project IM coordination.

In addition to this, Amor Group will also be supporting growing information management requirements from other Total projects such as West Franklin and Islay.

Operability Review:

Targeted Improvements to Enhance Safety and Reduce Production Loss

Maximising profit levels whilst retaining a tight rein on safety and environmental issues is the tightrope that all oil and gas producing facilities have to walk.

It is estimated that some petrochemical companies can lose up to $10,000,000 per year to unplanned plant upsets and shutdowns. Safe and profitable operation of process plants relies heavily upon the effective use of the control system, the field devices, the operator HMI and the controllers.  Underperformance in any of these areas can and will lead to unplanned outages and, consequently, lost production.

Amor Group’s Operability Review focuses on these aspects of your operation, targeting improvements that will lead to improved profitability and safer operations. The typical cost of an Operability Review for a single offshore platform producing 20,000 bpd may be easily recouped through the prevention of as little as 4 hours production loss (based on $75 per barrel pricing). Our Operability Review includes alarm management, loop integrity review and human machine interface (HMI) assessment.

An Operability Review will improve your process control system by targeting those areas that our knowledge and experience inform us will lead to significant reductions in production loss through a reduction in trips and upsets.

For more information on Amor Group’s Operability Review email info@amorgroup.com

MobileBoard+ Keeps Low Cost Carrier Ahead of the Competition

The critical path to a positive way forward for the airline industry is for carriers to simplify service and reduce costs across their operations. 

amorairlinesAnd our ground breaking paperless boarding solution, MobileBoard+, is helping forward thinking airlines around the globe do just that. MobileBoard+ sends IATA compliant 2D barcodes direct to travellers’ phones, enabling them to check-in and receive their boarding passes when they are away from the home or the office. Now, one of the UK's leading low cost carrier airlines is set to make the move to mobile boarding passes for passengers on all key routes, with the airline expecting that their customers will be able to enjoy the convenient new service by October this year.

The new contract comes as figures reveal that Austrian Airlines, who launched the solution 18 months ago, has seen the number of passengers using the technology more than double in three months, despite the fact that European air travel was adversely affected by the volcanic ash cloud during this period. In addition to transforming operational costs and maximising off-airport check in, the new system will also generate important ancillary revenue via a customer chargeback mechanism, which enables low cost carriers to add significant additional profit per seat in what is often an extremely competitive and low margin segment.

Alaistair Deacon, Transport Solutions Director at Amor Group, believes that the low cost carrier’s early adoption of such a market leading technology solution will be a particularly attractive service provision for time poor business travellers. “With the highest proportion of business travellers of any airline in this sector, adopting technology such as MobileBoard+ will help this customer stay ahead of its competitors.”

What’s next for MobileBoard+?
As true leaders in our field, we are continually developing MobileBoard+, playing our part in the move to 100% bar coded boarding passes by the end of 2010. IATA is already looking beyond the adoption of mobile bar coded boarding passes, focusing on the integration of technology such as Near Field Communication (NFC) into existing systems, a capability which already exists within our current application. Not only is Amor Group at the cutting edge now, we are already using our market knowledge, skills and expertise to create the technology that will continue to drive efficiency and savings  for the aviation industry in the coming years.

Call for Participants:

Increasing Non Aviation Revenues by Optimising Processes

The Increasing Non-Aviation Revenue (INAR) survey, will examine the current impetus for airports on increasing PAX spend, rationalising the link between improved PAX measurement, processing and stronger commercial performance. All participants of the survey will be eligible to receive our non aviation revenue whitepaper, as well as the opportunity to join a webinar on the subject. The webinar is scheduled to be held on November 30th and will be co-hosted by an independent retail expert from the industry.

Take part in our short survey that is focused on non-aviation revenue within airports, and the challenges facing operators trying to increase this income stream.

www.amorgroup.com/INAR

As aviation revenues reduce in the face of airlines increasing load factors rather than capacity, there is a need to increase non-aviation revenue. Passengers are spending too long waiting in queues, resulting in reduced dwell time in retail areas and a severely impacted willingness to spend.

With the INAR survey we aim to address the lack of intelligence on PAX movement and the impact on non-aviation revenues. Following the survey we will share our findings in a webinar co-hosted by Caroline Peters, Operational Research Manager at Dubai Airports; the world’s largest airport retailer.

This survey follows on from the industry survey, webinar and white paper we produced on Airport Security Operations, the results of which can be downloaded at www.amorgroup.com/SOAR

In Demand Across The Globe

As the latest passenger figures published by both IATA and ACI highlight strong growth in aviation passenger numbers, demand for our suite of specialist passenger operations solutions is increasing across the globe.

Compared to same period in 2009, IATA‘s latest figures show double-digit growth of nearly 12%, with the Asia-Pacific region experiencing a huge 15.5% jump in passengers embarking on international journeys.  At the same time, the latest PaxFlash report by ACI has highlighted a 7% increase in international travel during the first 6 months of 2010, coupled with a 5% rise in domestic journeys.

finalmap

As a result of this increased load, airports and airlines worldwide have had our Transport team flying across the globe in A380s to help them understand how they can better forecast, plan and resource their operations in consideration of these latest figures.

We’ve literally been to the ends of the earth in the last month, with projects in Sydney, Dubai, London, Seattle and Vancouver helping our teams rack up the air miles as our solutions help some of the world’s busiest airports streamline their passenger operations.

 

According to Jim McKenzie, Transport Business Unit Director at Amor Group:

We continue to see a clear link between the continued growth in aviation travel over the last 12 months and the growing interest in our solutions for understanding passenger movements from airports all across the globe.  Those that we’re working in partnership with have seen the benefits that innovative offerings like ours can deliver, with the increased opportunities to drive additional revenue through superior understanding of passenger dwell / movement activity at their airport. Implementing systems such as PAXPredict+ and PAXTrax+ at a time of increased passenger demand is a great way to capitalise on the revenue opportunities that the current environment presents.

A Unique Organisation Requires a Bespoke Solution

chpFrom arranging rotas to scheduling the school run, anyone that has ever been tasked with organising a group of people to complete even the simplest of tasks, will understand the co-ordination effort required to ensure that everyone ends up in the right place at the right time.

Now consider how much harder the co-ordination job becomes when dealing with 2,500 volunteers responsible for making daily decisions on the welfare of the country’s most vulnerable children and young people. This was the operational problem that Scotland’s Children’s Hearing's system faced, and following a competitive tendering exercise that Amor Group won, they asked us to come up with a solution that helped simplify the preparation of their nationwide volunteer work schedules.

After a period of in-depth consultation we designed and built a bespoke, rule-based system that creates monthly rotas for the highly trained and carefully selected volunteers. These rotas must be organised according to the rules that govern the makeup of Hearing session panels across Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities. Being volunteer led is one of the unique features that make Scotland’s Children's Hearings system so progressive and admired throughout the world, however, this uniqueness brings with it added organisational difficulties as each local authority’s panel varies from 557 to 16 volunteers and, in addition to the global default rules that apply to all Local Authorities, each Local Authority may have rules which must be applied to the allocation of members to a Hearing session. Over and above this, the requirements of individual pool members may also have preferences for locations, session volume and frequency and these take precedence over any Local Authority defaults.

“The system of automated rota creation that Amor Group has implemented for Scotland's Children’s Hearings system takes the pain out of rota scheduling and allows the progressive work of the panel and its volunteers to proceed in an efficient and effective manner”

Tom MacNamara, Support Team Leader, Workforce and Capacity Issues Division, Children's Hearing Branch


For more information about becoming a panel member please visit: www.childrens-hearings.co.uk/recruitment

Continued Growth Brings New Talent

Amor Group has recently created another 30 new jobs within our Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Coventry offices, which is in addition to the 90 additional employees taken on earlier in the year.

mylesgorton

Our success in securing new business (and there has been a lot of that happening in the public sector team recently!) means we are exceeding our targets for expansion and given the current market conditions, we are delighted not only to be creating jobs, but to be consistently generating positions for highly skilled people to join our business.

Check out this issue's interview with Myles Gorton, the newest talent to join the Public Sector team as Principal Consultant.  

A Short Interview With Myles Gorton

In this issue of More, we say hello to Myles Gorton, who recently joined Amor Group as Principal Consultant in our expanding Public Sector team.


Hi Myles, so you've been with us a few weeks now, tell us a bit about what are you working on?
I've a number of projects on the go just now. I'm working with colleagues on an initiative to extend our reach in the Higher and Further Education sectors - this builds on my experience working with a number of Universities to develop their ICT Strategies and helping them identify cost savings and efficiency opportunities through more effective use of sunk IT investment. That experience also supports our Local Authority business development too.  

So we want to know a little bit more about your background, where did you work before you joined us?
I have over 15 years experience of ICT consulting and project management with several blue chips including BT, Accenture and Ovum. Before I joined Amor Group I was working for Oakleigh Consulting. I've delivered consultancy projects for a wide range of clients in both Public and Private Sectors including The London Stock Exchange, Visa, Barclays, The British Library, various Departments of State in both Westminster and the devolved administrations.   

What’s you biggest professional achievement from the last 5 years?
There are two achievements I am proud of which relate to work I have been involved with for the British Library.  The first is helping to successfully introduce agile development methods into two difficult and complex projects essential to the future work of the Library; the second is developing a data management solution using Master Data Management approaches to consolidate  the number of customer information data sources from twenty to one thus improving the accuracy and utility of the information stored.

Last question, tell us a joke.
Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."

Boom! Boom! More recommends that you don't give up the day job Myles!

 

A Platform for Cost Efficiency

Organisations, regardless of their sector, are coming under increasing pressure to reduce their cost base from a wide range of stakeholders. Government, industry regulators and shareholders are all keen to see greater efficiency, whilst service delivery is expected to show continual improvement in the face of fiscal pressure. Over the last 3 months, Amor Group has been busy investing £750,000 in our Aberdeen Data Centre facility. The upgraded space carries all the essential infrastructure, redundancy and support required to help organisations across Aberdeen streamline IT operations via managed hosting and co-location, allowing a focus on core business functions. To celebrate, we’ll be hosting an event in Aberdeen on 30th September to show how our Data Centre, the leading commercial facility in Aberdeen, can help you to significantly reduce cost across your organisation. For more information e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

Information Management Forum Begins Benchmarking Study

Following demand from the Information Management Energy Forum members for a deeper and richer understanding of IM policies, processes and procedures across the energy sector, in June we initiated an industry wide benchmarking study. Both forum members and non-members are participating in the study, with the group predominantly made up of upstream oil and gas companies and engineering organisations located in the North East of Scotland. The goal of all our services is to focus on business value so that the information and technology departments that we work with can produce the best supporting cases for technology and service investments. We hope that the benchmarking study, that is being carried out in conjunction with Robert Gordon University, will help support this and initial findings will be available by the end of 2010, with the option of a follow up study in 2011.

For more information on the benchmarking study, or if you are interested in joining the IM Energy Forum, visit www.imenergyforum.com

 

We Commit to CSR

Earlier in the year we launched our CSR programme, Commit. Commit has a direct positive impact on employees and the communities where we have a presence and, as part of this, we employees nominated that we support the charity ENABLE Scotland for the next twelve months. Our first birthday party celebrations kicked off the fundraising effort at the end of May, and in one day we managed to raise an initial £1,250 for this Scottish based charity that helps children and adults with learning disabilities to live independent lives. In addition, Amor Group consultants are lending their time and skills to assist ENABLE Scotland employees implement a new change management programme, following the introduction of a complete technology refresh across the organisation. Our people intend to spend time throughout the coming year providing regular expert advice and support.

 

The Annual Customer Survey Results

It was have your say time in June, when we conducted our first customer survey. The results are just in and it is clear that our customers believe we understand their sectors and have a pragmatic approach that helps to drive business value - check out the full results now.

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