Newsletter 1

Welcome to the new and official staff Newsletter.  The aim is to compile and send out the newsletter once a fortnight. 

Once upon a time it was very easy to communicate with all of Access’s staff - they were all located here in Crows Nest and we used to have a staff meeting about once a month.  Now, we have people working all over Sydney and an office in Melbourne so holding a staff meeting becomes a logistical nightmare.

The aim of the newsletter is a forum to let you know what is happening in your organisation.  This includes new contracts won, changes in staff, changes in processes, new company initiatives etc.  It’s also open to contributions - if you have something to say or news to tell please let me know - it’s your newsletter.

CEO's Message
Its been a hectic six weeks and on top of all the project work that you have all been involved with, we have a number of exciting opportunities under way. Our Melbourne office is now well and truly up and running and a number of our existing and new clients are expressing an interest in extending our current projects and commencing new ones. (see Mark’s report below).
We have been trying to strike up a strategic relationship with Satyam (one of India’s leading IT service companies, with over 12,000 employees worldwide - 300+ in Australia - www.satyam.com) and I am happy to announce that on July 1, Satyam’s Worldwide President will announce a unique partnering arrangement with Access to offer combined onshore/offshore testing services to Australian clients. This announcement will occur at an event in the Hyatt hotel and will be made in front of the Indian Ambassador and a host of Satyam’s Australian clients including, Macquarie Bank, Comm Bank, F2, Qantas, AAPT, Cisco. It is a wonderful opportunity for Access and a resounding endorsement of how far we have come in the last few years, for a company of Satyams size to choose Access as a partner.
We are also now working with the Eclipse Group (a 100% subsidiary of Deloittes) on a number of projects with a view to forming a long term testing relationship. Eclipse specialise in web development and pride themselves as the largest developer in Australia (70+ people).
In addition to the above, we currently have proposals with clients such as Westpac, Optus, AAPT, ACS, Macquarie Uni, NMA and The Australian Heart Foundation.
As you can see, its been a busy few weeks and I look forward to reporting on the progress we make with these opportunities.

Welcome back and congratulations to Joanne Phan For those of you who don’t know Jo, she is our Financial Controller.  Jo has been off travelling through Europe for the past month and we are very relieved that she has finally returned.  The big news is that while she was away she got engaged.  We wish Jo and her new fiancée Brett a big congratulations on their engagement.

Welcome to Lisa Herrod
Welcome to Lisa Herrod who has accepted a full-time position as a usability analyst. Lisa has already delivered a number of successful projects and won further work on that basis. She was instrumental in Access' recent successful bid to be on the panel of suppliers for The Department of Immigration and Youth affairs.

Welcome to Peter Wright
 Congratulations to Peter Wright on becoming the newest full-time member of staff at Access.  Peter has worked for Access on a casual basis since 2002 and has recently been very successful in his position at the RTA.  Welcome Peter.

Congratulations to John Eklund . . .
John Eklund recently successfully completed his grading in Judo, in which he attained his brown belt (he has been blue for 25 years so about time!). With this he also qualifies as a Judo coach NCAS level 1. End of June he will travel to Greece to give a Keynote address at the 5th International Conference on Educational ICT. He is currently working on a project for The Australian Computer Society.

Happy Holidays to . . .
Peter Brawn is currently away overseas visiting family in the UK and holidaying in Thailand on the way home, he should be back in the office early July.
Roland Perpic is also taking a few days off for a bit of R&R, he should be back in the office next week.

Melbourne
 As most of you know Mark Bishop was originally based in our Sydney office.  He has taken the huge step of moving to Melbourne to set up our Melbourne operation and is having great success getting out to the market and promoting Access.  Here are Mark’s highs and lows for the past couple of months:
 
High's for April/May/June
* Started new work, conformance testing for TLF
* In-principle agreement today (11/6) with e-works to take on their equivalent of conformance testing
* Likely to get destra go-ahead soon
* Likely to get eclipse go ahead for test process review 
* VPN was established this month and working fine (thanks Rhys) 
* Good prospects for opening a Melbourne test lab very soon => move out of small but impressive office to large establishment of empire-like proportions
* Peter Wright joined ATC as a permanent based on great service at RTA - very happy customer!!!
*  Joel also doing great work too at RTA (to a fault) cos now we're having trouble getting him out of there
* Sharon Dreise doing great job at RTA managing a challenging project schedule and ever-changing scope 
* Taking new Aprilia SL1000R for a test ride tomorrow - whoooohoooo
* Thanks to Tessa Cotterrell's husband for recognising my fiancé's hard work at DataBank, Melbourne with a dinner voucher for two this weekend - whooohooo

Low's 
 
* No one to pay for my new Aprilia SL1000R
* Richmond got flogged again last weekend but there's always the next game - Sunday at the "G" 
*  Can’t see the view from my office here, but it is impressive 
*NAB hasn't returned my calls and emails

Tessa’s view from the RTA From what I have seen here at RTA, the projects are proceeding well. There are 8 of us here working on a number of different projects, ranging from load testing to workflow to automation. We are scattered all over the 8th floor, and one of us has a lovely corner seat next to a window with a great view over the train station (not me).
E-mail All staff on client sites that have client e-mail addresses can now have their Access e-mail forwarded directly to their client addresses to save everyone having to check two e-mail accounts.  It also makes life a little easier for those who don’t have access to the Web. This is now up and running for everyone at the RTA, MLC and CCH.

Rhys has gone to quite a bit of trouble to set this up.  Unfortunately it is not easy to keep track of.  If you have e-mail being forwarded to you at a client site, please let Rhys know if there is any change in your situation - eg. Switched to a different project / site so that the e-mail forwarding can be amended.

A big thanks to Rhys for organising this and assisting in improving communication with our people.

Timesheets
 Just a reminder to get your timesheets in to Access in a timely manner.  For those of you who are contractors and casuals we cannot guarantee you will be paid on time if your timesheets are not received by close of business on the Monday following the week just worked.
It is also important that we get the timesheets as soon as possible for the client’s sake.  Often we are required to report effort used to date on a weekly basis to the client.  If your timesheets are late then this report is not correct and makes us look unprofessional in the eyes of the client.
This also applies in the case of invoicing the client.  We have recently been caught out by staff submitting additional timesheets after we have invoiced the client.  Again, it makes Access look unprofessional if we have to go back to the client with additional invoices.

To combat this problem we are currently looking at several options for a web based timesheet system and are looking to implement this system sooner rather than later.  If anyone has worked with a system previously feels it would be useful to Access’s situation please let me know.

In the meantime, timely submission of timesheets does not just apply to casual’s and contractors - you full-time staff also have an obligation to ensure you submit your timesheets by the close of business on the Monday following the week just worked. Everyone’s co-operation with this would be greatly appreciated.

Work Assignments
 If you are sent out to a client site to work on a particular project and the client swaps you to another project you must let the account manager for that project know.  When the client swaps you without reporting it to Access it impacts the quotation that Access has supplied to the client.  In a case we had recently with Optus it has caused huge delays with getting invoice approvals from the client and ultimately Access being paid for the work performed.
 
The Next Newsletter The date for the next newsletter is Friday, 2nd July.  If anyone has anything to contribute please send it to me before then.  I would also like us to name our newsletter.  Rhys had the suggestion of "Tales from the Nest", if any of you can think of a better name please let me know