I have always believed that one of the great strengths of Vistair is keeping focus upon a few simple guiding factors.
These factors, which will always remain at the heart of our business have a common theme – listening. Listening to our clients and prospects, listening to our team and then to focus upon innovation of great solutions that build engagement within our clients, as the raison d'être for our product-service development.
It is therefore good to see that these themes continue to guide us by helping our business to plan a route to the future. This strategy is particularly evident through the recent changes in both our Document department and Development Services.
In February, Mark Poore, previously Quality Manager was promoted to our new Head of Document Services with a clear and exciting remit to refine and grow this document management engine room. Lesley Bell, previous head of this team, was promoted into a Vistair Quality Manager role and to pick up our HR duties. This latter move recognising that we have now grown to the size where we need someone dedicated to a company-wide personnel and HR function.
This was swiftly followed up by an outstanding DocuNet audit, resulting in a re-certification of the quality management system (QMS) together with transitioning to the updated ISO standard 9001:2015. As the world’s most recognised management system standard and used by over a million organisations across the world it is a worthy certification.
Mark has also initiated a number of changes within the Document Services team that will result in a greater degree of talent flexibility. This will ensure that during high volume requests more editorial staff trained in a broader range of skills will be able to support the demand.
Likewise our Development Services team, led by Gill Love, has made a number of structural team changes in order to ensure there is increased focus on product innovation and implementation activity. This includes the appointment of Paul Hancock as Technical Governance and QA Manager, and the recruitment of Development Managers to focus upon respective SMS product streams. Lee Berry has already started in one of the roles. In addition Mark Latham (Project Office) has expanded his responsibility to support our Product Owner team.
And finally it would be remiss of me not to mention a recent visit to Vistair by Janette Benaddi and Niki Doeg from the “Four Mums in a Boat” trans-Atlantic rowing team. Speaking to the Vistair team it was not just a pleasure but completely inspirational, hearing how they completed the unarguably extraordinary feat of rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in a record time. The accomplishment provides a clear example of how embarking on what might appear to be an impossible mission through both willpower and the necessity to overcome obstacles in order to get success is absolutely possible for everyone.
For more information about Four Mums in a Boat and their fundraising activities take a look at their website and their story is worth reading: http://www.yorkshirerows.com/
For me, I’m energised and excited to be part of such a great team of people here in Vistair where ingenuity, willpower, innovation and feedback will continue to power our business and your success!
Ian Herbert