Business as usual at Onto the Page

It’s been three weeks since the UK government announced the introduction of social distancing and self-isolation measures, and in the wake of COVID-19, all businesses face unprecedented change. While we don’t know how long the government’s remote working recommendations will continue, our clients can be confident that we’ll be there to help them win business and operate successfully, no matter what.

Here at Onto the Page, though we’re still fully staffed and fully functional, we’ve had to quickly implement some big changes. While the transition from office to home has certainly come with its challenges (who’s going to water the office plants?!), we’ve quickly adapted to new ways of working thanks to our robust management systems, business continuity plan, and (last-minute) preparations before the lock-down.

Communication has been key – one of our first moves was to set up two daily ‘team check-in’ video calls and further our use of collaborative tools such as Trello.

Maintaining strong relationships with our clients, built up over years of successful bid management and solutions, has played a crucial role in keeping Onto the Page as busy as ever. We’ve been proactive in updating our clients on procurement changes and provided support to clients, new and old, around securing tender opportunities during this challenging time. We’d like to thank all our existing clients for the work they continue to commission, and our prospects and new clients for taking the leap of faith in these difficult times.

Perhaps most importantly, our adaptability has been down to the resilience of our team. As well as keeping the momentum of our current projects, we’ve attended online networking events, connected with new clients, and delivered our industry-leading bid and tender workshops in the form of online webinars.

Though our team have been fantastic at quickly transitioning to new working arrangements, we’ve had plenty of external support along the way to ensure we continue to deliver our world-class bid and tender services. Wakefield-based IT services providers, Mint IT Support, have been constantly on hand to solve any technical issues. Marianne Smith’s (Doo Marketing) advice on adapting our marketing plan has been invaluable.

We’ve continued to work with our business coach Andrew Gibson (Business Services Leeds) and trainer Chris Burton (Cube Learning and Development) via virtual team sessions, where we focus on positive strategies for navigating the current situation both on a personal and business level. In our latest session with Andrew we learnt how to stay connected and productive while working in new ways, while Chris recently guided us through effective stress management. We’re also grateful to Bid Perfect for providing us with additional online training and development modules.

Achieving ISO9001:2015 certification!

We’re delighted that our Quality Management System is now certified to ISO9001:2015 international standards.

When we started this journey, our priority wasn’t getting a certificate, it was building a Quality Management System that would allow us to deliver the best service to our clients. Now, our clients benefit from:

• Assurance that our management systems are externally assessed and certified.
• A continuously improving service; our customer satisfaction is currently 100%.
• A consistent, customer focused approach, no matter who you deal with.
• Having all your expectations met, with a ‘right first time’ delivery.
• A better chance of success; our win rate is an enviable 80%.
• Efficient, speedy resolutions to complaints
• Better value for money; we’ve refined our systems to ensure maximum efficiency across our services.

Achieving this certification hasn’t been easy, especially as we’ve done this alongside writing hundreds of bids over the last year! However, the experience has really allowed us to relate to our clients who are beginning their route to certification. In a competitive market, especially in the public sector, having ISO certifications are often the difference between winning or losing a contract.

We’re so proud of our achievement. To see the benefits it has brought, and continues to bring, has made all the hard work worth it. Thank you to our team, and to everyone who has provided guidance and support along the way!