New Faces
We would like to introduce Matthew Harley. Matthew
has joined us to bolster our support team even further.
Many of you will have already spoken to him as he has been
with us since February. Matthew likes going to rock/metal gigs and festivals and watching F1 and football.
Important Information
System Backups
For those clients that remain on-premise rather than being in the Cloud (see below for the benefits) it is important that you check your backups are happening regularly and securely. We would hate to have a client coming to us with a dead computer only to find that they have no useable backup for us to use to restart them.
If you are concerned about your backup regime, please contact the Delivery Software Helpdesk who can check how your backups are configured so you can ensure they are being taken.
If you want Delivery Software to be responsible for taking your backups, please contact George and he will be happy to discuss moving you to our Cloud SaaS solution.
Support Hours
Just a reminder that our official Support Hours, and the basis upon which we levy monthly/annual support fees are Monday to Friday 8.00am to 5.00pm and Saturday 9:00am to 3.00pm. This excludes Public Holidays.
An increasing number of clients are trying to contact us outside these hours, please try to ensure that all business-critical operations are completed within these hours.
While we appreciate that the nature of the work our clients undertake, can mean that the need for assistance arises outside these times. Our Team may occasionally check the online chat system for notified issues out of these hours, but this is purely on an ad hoc and very much voluntary basis.
Christmas Hours
Our office will be closed from 14:30 on Friday 12th December, so that we can enjoy our annual Christmas Party. Please try to ensure that all business your critical processes are completed by that time as there will not be anyone available on support to assist with any issues. The support line on Saturday 13th December will not open until 10am.
- Wednesday 24th December – 8am till 1pm
- Thursday 25th December – Closed
- Friday 26th December – Closed
- Saturday 27th December – 9am till 3pm
- Monday 29th December – 9am till 3pm
- Tuesday 30th December – 9am till 3pm
- Wednesday 31st January – 9am till 1pm
- Thursday 1st January – Closed
- Friday 2nd January – Normal support hours resume
Benefits of moving to the cloud
All new clients, and more and more existing clients are using their Paragon software hosted in the cloud (Software as a Service or more commonly referred to as SaaS). But what has led to this shift away from having the software installed on local PCs or local network systems?
There are a whole host of good business reasons.
- Reduced IT management costs – We look after the computer environment that runs our software. You simply need devices which can connect to the internet. As a result, we can significantly reduce or in some cases completely take away the headache of managing your core IT infrastructure and associated costs
- Flexibility of where you work and how you access your systems – Having your software installed in our AWS cloud, means it is accessible 24/7 from any location with suitable internet access and a portable device (Windows/Mac)
- Business continuity – If you can’t get to the office, or your in-office IT is compromised (fire, theft, flood, power outage etc) you can still access your system from any internet connected alternate location.
- Scalability –Traditional computing often means that your business growth requires expensive ‘step changes’ in infrastructure, storage, processing capability etc. With a SaaS solution, you can increase your IT capability as easily as turning a dial. You just pay for what computing capability you need, when you need it.
- Backup – we automatically take a daily backup of your data providing peace of mind that in the event of an issue arising which needs data reinstating, we can go back 30 days.
- Access to new features – Some of the exciting new features being released are only able to work in the cloud. These include being able to pre-authorise credit cards facilitating weekly payment collection and instant sign up for new clients.
Speak to us about how we can help you make that journey to the cloud.
WHAT'S NEW...
Apart from a few minor changes to various reports, EDI interfaces and user screens, recent months have been spent with improvements to the internal workings of the application to make it more robust and reliable. You may think that nothing is changing, but we are just giving Paragon a bit of TLC to keep it running reliably.
We are keen to introduce functionality that our clients want and need and whilst we can’t promise to provide everything everybody wants as part of our R&D process, we can certainly take on board what is most important to you.
These are things that have been mentioned to us recently and we would love your feedback as to which you would like to see introduced:
- Real-time Proof of Delivery: this is having the Android handheld application send back delivery information as it happens rather than wait until the End of Session
- Payment on Order: force YourMOO customers to pay for certain high-value items as they order
Credit Limit - Enforcement: Improve the way that credit limit exceptions are enforced
- Delivery surcharge: automatically apply a charge based on pre-defined rules
Let us know which of these you would like to see, or provide your own ideas.
YourMoo
We have spent the last few months giving YourMOO a complete overhaul. It has now been complied in a more modern PHP language called Laravel. This gives us more scope for adding customisable features and improves security. A small handheld of clients have already moved over to the newer version and the feedback has been amazing. We will be in touch regarding the upgrade in due course, however if you’d like to move sooner rather than later, please get in touch.
Instant Sign Up using Open Banking via GoCardless
We’re excited to announce a new “Instant Sign Up” option on the updated version of YourMOO. We’ve heard your feedback about losing potential customers due to the manual registration process, and this new feature is designed to address that.
New customers can now visit your website and browse products on YourMOO. The process begins with them entering their postcode to confirm delivery availability in their area. Once confirmed, they can fill their cart with one-off or recurring orders, check out, and pay for products using Open Banking via GoCardless. A Direct Debit mandate is also set up during this process for any future payments.
This streamlined process allows customers to complete their order and be ready for delivery without any authorisation delays.
YourMOO App
Don’t forget we now can also provide a mobile app to accompany the fantastic new version of YourMOO, available on both IOS and Android. Get in touch with George for pricing.
Paragon Web
We’re pleased to share a new feature on the Customer Screen within Paragon Web, which further enhances our GoCardless integration.
This new functionality allows you to easily send an email to customers with a link to set up a Direct Debit Mandate for GoCardless. This is particularly useful for customers who do not have, or do not wish to use, a YourMOO account. Once the customer signs up via the link, the GoCardless and Paragon accounts will be automatically linked, eliminating the need for manual matching.
Customer Satisfaction
Increasing numbers of clients take the time when they receive their ticket closure email to let us know what they thought of the service from the team. With 90% of clients receiving Great Service, it’s a fantastic job by the support team.
