GROUP
NEWS
Alden parsing software finds wider audience
Alden Document
Technologies is launched
Alden shortlisted
for outsourcing award
Alden develops
BPO capabilities
Alden hits the headlines in Chennai
ALDEN IN INDIA
APPSI achieves Investors In People standard
Achieving
quality at APPSI
Alden opens editorial
unit in Trichy
NASA presentation for APPSI employee
New Operations Director at APPSI
APPS India Celebration Day
OTHER NEWS
The advantages of offshore
William treks
for charity
Alden staff compete
in Singapore: Soccer 7s results
Alden sponsors Asian soccer tournament
APPSI
achieves Investors In People standard
[21 February
2006]
As APPSI looks set for major growth
this year, we are delighted to have achieved recognition against the Investors
in People status – showing the importance we place on the role our staff
play in achieving our success.
The IIP standard was developed
in the UK in recognition of the need to introduce formal standards, assessment
procedures and recognition for best practice in the management of human
resources. Commitment to the standard is now seen as an important factor
in business success and around 95% of all major UK companies are officially
recognised as IIP.
The standard became international
in 2001 but a relatively small number of companies in India hold the standard.
The fact that APPSI is one of the very few companies in Chennai to possess
IIP means that we can demonstrate to current and potential employees the
attention paid to staff recruitment, training, management, morale and
retention. IIP forms part of our overall business goals in India, and
together with ISO 9001:2000 ensures that APPSI continues to grow and flourish.
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New
team at the top
[28 November 2005]
Following
a year spent in India, Alden Group Director Robert Hay has returned to
the UK to take on responsibility for New Business Development, which encompasses
both Alden Business Solutions and Alden Electronic Products. Nigel
Wyman remains in India as newly appointed BPO Operations Director.
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Alden parsing software finds wider audience
[25 July 2005]
Xassist, the SGML and XML quality control tool designed by Alden Electronic Products, has received a 5 star rating from a new customer within the aerospace industry. SGML was welcomed by the industry when it first appeared, as it allowed thousands and thousands of pages of technical
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manuals to be stored, updated and referred to easily and efficiently.
Consultancy company I and I Solutions enthused that the software is “easy to use, even for a user that is new to the mark-up environment. The ability to parse and check specific business rules with a click of the mouse is brilliant”.
I and I Solutions is owned by Ian Scrimshaw, who works as a Technical Author for a leading software and technical publications business, and Ian Henderson, who works within the aerospace industry. Between them they have over 30 years experience of producing technical documentation for the semiconductor, defence and aerospace industries – so their comments about Xassist are high praise indeed.
Their recent purchase was for use on a project for a major aerospace organisation; however they hope to widen their use of the software to other clients.
For more information on Xassist or to download a 30-day free trial, click here.
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Achieving quality at APPSI
[13 July 2005]
R. Giri Venkatesh, the ISO Team leader at Alden Prepress Services India, has just passed his QMS [Quality Management Systems] Auditors Course. This will enable Giri to undertake internal audits of our workflows and procedures to ensure ongoing achievement of the ISO 9001:2000 quality assurance standard.
We are delighted with Giri's achievement and hope to extend ISO accreditation to Alden Press later this year.
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The
advantages of offshore
[12 May 2005]
In an article in this week's Printing
World, William Alden explains the advantages of running our own Indian
subsidiary. William identifies three key benefits:
- The cost savings have enabled us to make investments in Alden Press,
including the recently purchased bindery
equipment.
- We have tighter managerial control than if we were working in partnership
with an Indian company.
- There is now the opportunity to expand into other services that require
similar skills, such as BPO and medical transcription.
William also was clear on why Alden
chose India rather than elsewhere in Asia. First, because India has English
as a second language the management and communication is considerably
better than it would be elsewhere. Secondly, "India's culture is
to educate ... India has a pool of scientific graduates": a recruitment
advertisement in the local paper results in a queue round the block of
eager prospective employees.
However William also admits one
drawback - the resources required to run APPSI. See page 3 of the Spring
issue of Alden
Answers for more news on the current deployment of UK management and
the recent installation of video-conferencing.
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William treks for charity
[5 April 2005]
William Alden has just spent a gruelling ten days trekking in Nepal to raise money for the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy. Following his completion of the London Marathon last year this is an achievement William is justifiably proud of – not least because he turns 50 this month. But the worst part? Not the blisters, but being completely out of communication for over a week!
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Alden
Document Technologies is launched
[11 February 2005]
The Alden Group are pleased to announce the acquisition of Document Technologies
based in Chalgrove, Oxfordshire. Document Technologies has a turnover
of £250,000 and employs seven staff. The business has installed
document management systems into many large corporate businesses and has
been steadily growing their document imaging business to include complex
conversion, preservation, document warehousing and web-based document
retrieval.
Speaking about the acquisition, William Alden said:
"We have been looking to
expand our expertise and competences beyond the publishing arena for a
number of years. We have looked at a number of document processing and
EDM [electronic document management] businesses, but Document Technologies
Limited matched our technical aspirations as well as sharing our commitment
to high levels of quality and service. We felt they would complement our
business extremely well."
For more information on Alden Document Technologies, please see www.document-technologies.com.
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Alden
shortlisted for outsourcing award
[11 November 2004]
The National
Outsourcing Association (NOA) is holding its inaugural Awards for
Best Practice in Outsourcing. Alden are delighted to have been shortlisted
in the category of Most Successful Offshoring Operation, the winner of
which is to be announced at a black tie dinner later this month.
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Alden opens editorial unit in Trichy
[8 October 2004]
William Alden has inaugurated the new editorial unit in Tiruchirappalli, the fourth largest city in Tamil Nadu, also known as Trichy.
The aim of this unit is to concentrate exclusively on copy editing and
English language skills. Our Language Development Manager, Vanessa Harrison,
has recently hired a language teacher who will be based in India for the
coming academic year.
There is a wealth of graduates available in Trichy and one of the purposes of setting up this unit is to make ourselves less dependent on the increasingly competitive job market in Chennai. Twenty-five staff have already been hired and we fully expect that the unit will be every bit as successful as our offices in Chennai.
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NASA presentation for APPSI employee
[4 October 2004]
Sakthi Vel, who works for Group Technical Development in our new office in Trichy, India, has written a paper on "Automated testing control for software metrics" that has been selected for presentation by NASA.
The Software Assurance Technology Centre (SATC ) was established in 1992 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), home to the USA's largest organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to learning and sharing their knowledge. The SATC was founded to become a NASA centre of excellence in software assurance, dedicated to making measurable improvement in software quality and reliability.
Not only is this an incredible achievement in itself, but also only four papers were selected worldwide, and this was the only one from India. Therefore we here at Alden are very proud of Sakthi's success which clearly demonstrates the calibre of our employees.
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New Operations Director at APPSI
[5 July 2004]
Due to significant expansion at APPSI, Alden are delighted to announce the appointment of S. Prakash
as Operations Director. Prakash started his career in the printing industry,
joining Indian Express (one of India 's leading newspapers) in 1994 after
completing his MBA. He also worked for the TATA Group before joining APPSI
in its very early days back in 2001 as Production Manager.
Prakash will be spending a couple
of months in the UK over the summer to learn more about the Alden Group
before taking on the challenges of his new role.
Nigel Wyman, who has been based
in Chennai for the last couple of years, is due to return to the UK permanently
later this year. Many of you will have read his Memoirs in Chennai in
Alden Answers and will know that he has had a very rewarding time in India
in terms of both his achievements in the office and his experiences beyond
it.
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| APPS India Celebration
Day
[15 June 2004]
In glorious summer weather, Alden Prepress Services India (APPSI)
staff met together by the shore of the Bay of Bengal on Saturday,
22 May at an event to celebrate the growth of the company and its
great successes over the past few months.
The 420 staff attended a day of music, dancing, award presentations,
games and swimming in the sea at a new hotel complex beside the
sea at Mahaballipuram, some 30 miles south of Chennai. In addition
to a 98% turn-out from Indian staff, William Alden, Brian Jelf and
Robert Hay represented the Group Directors and there were a couple
of other staff from the UK there as well.
The highlights of the day were the wonderful music and singing of
Elango Pushpalingam, who is an editor in our Bookwork Origination
department, some hilarious improvised acting from Prakash, Prasanna,
Sankar and Doug Barry and the presentation of the winning trophy
to the APPSI cricket team who won the Chennai inter-company cricket
competition this season, beating some stiff opposition from companies
much bigger than ours.
Thanking the staff for attending, William Alden commented that it
was the first time that he has seen the whole of the APPSI staff
gathered together in one space and it was a magnificent, if somewhat
humbling, experience. It was wonderful to see a group of people
who work so hard together relax and enjoy themselves; the great
spirit of our business in India is plain to see, both at work and
at play. The day was such a success that it ended with a commitment
from everyone to make it a regular annual event.
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Alden staff compete in Singapore: Soccer 7s results
[15 June 2004]
The SCC-Breitling International Soccer 7s Tournament, an annual
event held for the past 13 years at the picturesque and historical
Singapore Cricket Club, was given an Indian flavour this year by
the participation of the Alden-sponsored Madras United. The club
has been around as a loose affiliation of expat and local players
in Chennai for the past 7 years, and this was to be by far their
biggest challenge to date.
The draw for the first round of games thankfully kept Madras apart
from the German ex-internationals and World Cup winners, but we
did run up against the ex-
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Madras United, with Alden staff Neil Ferguson (back row, far left) and Nigel Wyman (back row, second from right) |
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professionals of Middlesbrough FC, whose
line-up included (for those old enough to remember) Viv Anderson,
Bernie Slavin and John Hendry. Despite an excellent performance
against the Boro, resulting in a narrow 2-1 defeat, points were
unfortunately lost elsewhere, and only a wildcard and other teams
dropping out saw Madras play two more games on the second day of
the tournament.
Despite the slight disappointment of not progressing to the final
rounds, the tournament was great fun and a huge success. Thanks
to the raucous Madras fans who had travelled from the UK, Pakistan,
India and Thailand to cheer on the team we did not go unnoticed
during the weekend, and if there was a competition for the best
turned out team our Alden-sponsored home and away kits would have
taken the prize!
Further tours to Thailand and Dubai have been discussed - pending
fitness tests on nine pairs of aging legs!
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Alden
develops BPO capabilities
[2 June 2004]
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is an expanding market within India and many of the competences acquired by the Alden Group since establishing Alden Prepress Services are applicable. At the beginning of 2004, Brian Jelf was appointed as Business Development Director tasked with looking to extend our services beyond the academic publishing market.
On a recent visit Brian made contact with a number of potential business partners which would allow Alden to offer a complete range of offshore solutions to clients. This trip is being followed up with visits to UK and USA based companies who have expressed an interest in using the high quality facilities, staff and partnerships that have been established.
For more information please see the Alden
Business Solutions page.
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Alden
sponsors Asian soccer tournament
[12 May 2004]
The Alden Group will be sponsoring a team at the annual SCC-Breitling
International Soccer 7s Tournament, to be held at the historic Singapore
Cricket Club on 22nd / 23rd May. Madras United is one of 40 teams
from across the world competing at this prestigious event, which this
year includes ex-professionals from Middlesbrough FC and a team containing
members of the German World Cup winning team of 1990.
Alden is proud to be involved in this high-profile event, not only through
our sponsorship reflecting the company's expansion into south east Asia,
but also by having three members of our UK and Indian staff gracing the
hallowed turf of The Padang for the Chennai-based team. We shall have
results from the event on this site in June.
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Alden
hits the headlines in Chennai
[7 April 2004]
Alden Prepress Services held a press conference on 7th April to announce
its plans for expansion through investment and acquisition over the coming
year. The Alden Group are planning to set up BPO (business process outsourcing)
services in Chennai, and are also looking into establishing an overseas
production unit in Malaysia.
The event was attended by a number of local newspapers – click
here to see how the news was reported in India.
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