Quotation "auto-chase" feature coming soon. Big time-saver for your sales teams

We're putting the finishing touches onto our new quotation "auto-chase" feature in Alpha Tracker.  This will be a huge time-saver for sales teams wanting to follow up on open quotes without manually writing individual emails to each prospect.

Preview of our quotation auto-chase feature

You filter the list of open quotes to select the ones you want to follow up.  Once you have the list ready, you can select all or a selection and press the new "Chase" button.  This will give you a customisable email template before you click to send.  Each quotation will then be followed up with the emails copied into your Tracker Filer address.

Our beta-tester consultancies will be the first to see the feature and give us feedback. If you'd like a sneak preview, too, get in touch.

Another 700 Alpha Legal, Legacy Portal & Alpha Portal subscribers are now live

We've just reached another milestone with another 700 subscribers now live on the Alpha Legal, Legacy Portal and Alpha Portal platforms.

We're an award-winning secure client portal for will writers, IFAs, accountants and other professionals and we welcome new subscribers.  Find out more on our websites.

Zac & Kim are at the UKATA Asbestos Conference 2024. Come and say hello!

The UKATA Asbestos Conference 2024 is underway at the Leonardo Hotel East Midlands Airport.

Zac & Kim have arrived, they've erected our Alpha Tracker stand (in record time, they tell us!) and are ready to meet our friends, clients and colleagues from the UK asbestos industry.

Zac, Kim, Andrew Paten (UKNAR) and Wayne Bagnall MBE

Do go and find them if you're attending the UKATA event today.  They can even schedule an Alpha Tracker asbestos software demo for you, there and then!

Peter Posh software system nears completion. But first, a selfie!

The software development professionals at Start Software have been building a new system for the UK's leading formal hire company, Peter Posh.

Development Team Leader Dan and Director Robin were driving to meet a client in Leamington Spa and noticed a Peter Posh showroom on the way.  So they pulled in for a photo or two!

Dan outside Peter Posh Warwick

Robin & Dan

The Peter Posh software development uses technology from Start's US software partner, Alpha Software.  Start Software are Alpha Software UK professional partners and can help fellow developers with any Alpha Anywhere, Alpha TransForm or Alpha Cloud technical queries.  Do get in touch if we can help you.

Kim & Catherine have arrived in Madrid for asbestos conference Asbestonomy 2024

Asbestonomy 2024 is being held in Madrid, Spain, and Kim & Catherine are there to represent asbestos software Alpha Tracker and data sharing protocol OpenAsbestos.

Kim & Catherine

If you're attending Asbestonomy this year, do find Kim & Catherine and say hello.  They have lots of news & information about Alpha Tracker to share with the international asbestos community!

Water hygiene and asbestos air monitoring go live at Norse Infinity

Further to the Alpha Tracker training delivered for the Norse Infinity asbestos professionals, their water hygiene (Legionella) and air monitoring staff have now also gone live.

Here are some photos from today's session with Catherine from Start Software working with Alpha Tracker specialist Kim to deliver the training:

Today's Alpha Tracker training for Norse Infinity

Happy birthday to Danielle, too! What an unusual way to spend your special day!!!

Tom's Alpha Anywhere "Similarity Searching" webinar with Alpha Software is live on our website and YouTube

Want to know more about "similarity searching" in Alpha Anywhere?  Check out Tom's webinar - "from sounds like to is like" on our website or YouTube.

Watch Tom's webinar on our website or YouTube

Tom goes on a journey from sounds like with SOUNDEX to is like with AI tech and vectors.  Interesting stuff and useful to anyone wanting to build an intuitive searching UI in their software.

If we can help you with any Alpha Software-related queries, do get in touch.

What a lovely goodbye from a long-standing Alpha Tracker user

One of our Alpha Tracker asbestos consultancies is winding up their surveying business because their lead surveyors are retiring.

We wish our client well in their retirement

We received this lovely email to thank us for our service:

"We would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole team at Start Software for your assistance in setting this system up for us, for fine tuning it to suit our needs and for the excellent support given throughout the 7 years we have been with you – I see our first payment to you was back in May’17!

It’s been a pleasure dealing with you all throughout this time, thank you."

We are truly blessed to have such lovely clients!

Milestone! 10,000th Alpha Tracker job booked in at Start Software

We use Alpha Tracker to run our own business.  Does that seem odd, considering most Alpha Tracker users are asbestos consultancies or water hygiene specialists and we are a software business?

You might be wondering why a software company like ours uses Alpha Tracker, a tool typically designed for asbestos consultancies, water hygiene specialists, and environmental consultants. The answer is simple: we believe in practising what we preach. By using Alpha Tracker ourselves, we're constantly on the lookout for new features and performance improvements. If something in Alpha Tracker bothers us, it's likely to bother you too, and this motivates us to fix it quickly!

Whenever a client requests a new feature or asks us to modify their asbestos report templates, for instance, we log that task as a project in our own instance of Alpha Tracker.  This method not only helps us track our work but also ensures that we experience the software just like our clients do.

We're excited to share that we've recently hit a significant milestone: the 10,000th project booked in Alpha Tracker! This achievement underscores our commitment to continuous improvement and our dedication to providing the best possible experience for our users.

We've recorded 10,000 jobs here at Start Software

Keep the feedback coming and we'll keep improving Alpha Tracker! Get in touch here.

PS the 10,000th job was from our friends at Hampshire Country Council... a box of chocolates is on its way to them!

Comments from our Alpha Tracker training sessions. Get in touch if you would like more training for your office or site staff

We've been (very!) busy over the last month with new Alpha Tracker installations - see here and here and here!  Whenever we implement a new Alpha Tracker asbestos software system for an asbestos consultancy, we deliver training, either face-to-face or via Microsoft Teams/Zoom.

We can deliver training via Microsoft Teams/Zoom as well as face-to-face

Here are some of the recent comments we've received from clients:

"Training session was excellent. Kim was very clear and knowledgeable and we learnt how to use the forms easily"

 "Was a great training session, got lots out of it"

"I thought the training was excellent and entertaining enough to keep everyone's interest. I would definitely recommend your software and training to other companies"

"No issues need highlighting. Kim was very professional in answering questions, working through the stages on setup & usage and helped troubleshoot issues we had initially."

"Training was amazing, Judy was clear and answered all of our questions with ease and clarity."

Reviewing other post-training comments, some clients have asked for follow-up training, others would like us to improve Alpha Draw to add more features, and others have asked for more information on QR codes.  We take all feedback seriously and try to act upon it.

If you'd like to book some refresher training or extra training for your staff, get in touch.

 

New feature in the Wallboard to "block book time". It's fabulous and in the next release of Alpha Tracker

Have you been looking for a better way to block book time in Alpha Tracker?  Perhaps for holidays, public holidays, or even project work?

We've built a new feature into Alpha Tracker's Wallboard to enable you to do just that!

Click the YouTube video below to watch how to do it

Here's Robin showing you how you can drag & drop to create appointments within the Wallboard.  Easy!

Want to know more about Alpha Tracker's calendar and Wallboard features?  Check out our Alpha Tracker Tips & Tricks Webinars.

Almond Environmental's asbestos lab is now live with asbestos software Alpha Tracker!

Welcome Lindsay and the whole of the Almond Environmental asbestos team!

Kim has just completed the virtual Alpha Tracker training session and Almond's asbestos lab is ready to go.

Kim talking to Lindsay, configuring Alpha Tracker for their asbestos lab

We're introducing some exciting (possibly revolutionary) new features for asbestos labs in the next release of Alpha Tracker.  Want to know more?  Get Get in touch!

Norse Infinity are joining the Alpha Tracker family. Their asbestos professionals are trained and ready to go

We're delighted to be welcoming the asbestos and water hygiene professionals from Norse Infinity to the Alpha Tracker consultancy family.  Kim met and trained some of their asbestos professionals last week to show them how to use Alpha Tracker in the office and when on-site.

The Norse-Infinity training room

Asbestos and water hygiene are just two of the services that Norse Infinity provides.  Their full range of environmental and testing services includes:

• asbestos testing and management
• water hygiene
• mechanical and electrical services
• fire system management
• renewable energy, and
• facilities management.

Find out more about Norse Infinity here: https://norseinfinity.co.uk/

Can we help your environmental consultancy to switch to award-winning Alpha Tracker?  Get in touch!

701 calls taken in May by our Support Team. Steady month

Our fabulous support team took 701 calls from clients in May 2024.

We've been analysing the reasons why people have needed to speak to us.  The most common are:

• "data queries" - questions about information within a system and how to process it (18%)
• "change requests" - callers asking for new software features or changes to existing ones (6%)
• "technical/server support" - clients calling us because they don't have their own IT support (5%). 

Most calls turn into "tickets", our means to track issues.  Overall, we solved 94% of high-priority tickets within 2 hours - a good result.

We blog every month to show the performance of our support desk because we want to be completely transparent and open with our clients and prospective customers.  Hope this information is useful!

Lovely surprise! Adventurer Andrew Bedwell drops into our Telford office for a cup of tea

Remember the incredible Andrew Bedwell and his World Record "Big C Challenge" attempt at crossing the Atlantic in the shortest boat ever?  Start Software/Alpha Tracker were key sponsors and we also built an app for Andrew to use on the crossing.

Andrew in our Telford office

Andrew is working towards another crossing attempt in 2025 and just dropped in to see us and let us know how his plans are progressing.  With a new all-aluminium boat design (which is 6cm longer internally - positively spacious!) and even better preparation, we're sure attempt #2 will be successful.

Watch this space! 

Dan & Jack's latest Alpha Tracker Tips & Tricks Webinar is now available to watch on YouTube

Did you miss our live webinar last week?  Dan & Jack showed the various "diary sync" options in Alpha Tracker including Google Calendar, Exchange (that's Outlook and Office365) and even the incredible FLS from our partners Fast Lean Smart!

Don't worry if you did miss it! You can watch the recording on our website or on YouTube.

Watch all previous Alpha Tracker webinars on our website

Or click this video to watch on YouTube, instead!

Welcome TCL Asbestos! Another asbestos consultancy joins the Alpha Tracker family

TCL Asbestos in Leeds is the latest asbestos consultancy to choose asbestos software Alpha Tracker.

TCL are proud of their professional, efficient, cost-effective asbestos management services and solutions.  Their senior team has decades of experience in the asbestos industry.

John and Sam from TCL Asbestos

The TCL asbestos professionals are now live with Alpha Tracker.  Can we help your asbestos consultancy to become more efficient and effective?  Get in touch!

Jack's webinar with Alpha Software is now on YouTube. Watch how we build Cordova apps with Alpha Anywhere, AppFlow and Docker

We've just delivered another Alpha webinar with our US software partners, Alpha Software.  

This time, Jack showed how to build Cordova apps using several techniques in Alpha Anywhere including AppFlow and Docker.

The Alpha webinars page on our website at https://start-software.com/alpha-software

Watch the recording of the webinar on YouTube or on our website, or click below:

Three(!) new Alpha Tracker asbestos consultancies are going live in the next 7 days... Kim will be exhausted!

We're training 3 (three!) asbestos consultancies during the next 7 days to enable them to switch to our asbestos software Alpha Tracker.

Three new asbestos consultancies will be online next week

All of these consultancies have been using asbestos software from other providers but have decided to switch to Alpha Tracker because of our 24x7 support, flexibility and customer service.

Our trainer Kim is on the road for the next week to get everyone online.

We're taking Alpha Tracker orders for late summer installations so do get in touch if you'd like a demo and a no-obligation quotation in June or July.