Aligned Assets Announce Autumn Events Schedule

Gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets are looking forward to an event filled autumn with the announcement of both their Symphony User Group meeting and a Street Naming and Numbering training course scheduled for September.

The Symphony User Group is on Wednesday 18th September and the ever-popular ‘Law of Street Naming and Numbering’ training course will be held the week after on 25th September.

The Symphony User Group, or SUG as it is affectionately known, has been running since 2006 and is open to all local authority users of Aligned Assets’ Symphony Suite of gazetteer software. In order to maximise user participation and to offset the limits on travel caused by public sector austerity, this meeting is to be held as a webinar.

The primary focus of the user group will be the on-going development of the software and, as in previous years, will be set up to allow for attendees to feed directly into the development priorities. A central component of Aligned Assets policy, it is felt that the users are best placed to influence development and the SUG’s agenda will duly reflect this.

Like the SUG, the Law of Street Naming and Numbering training course is also focused on the needs of the attendee and is designed to equip the delegate with all the knowledge and skills required to legally fulfil their statutory duties in Street Naming and Numbering.

As an essential component of local government, Street Naming and Numbering plays a crucial role in everything from the collection of council tax to the registration of electors. Despite its importance to many of the modern functions within local government, the law governing it dates back to 1847 and in order for the process to operate correctly and within the confines of the law, understanding the legalities involved is of the utmost importance.

For the opportunity to register or to find out more, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/events

ABOUT ALIGNED ASSETS
Aligned Assets are an industry leader in AddressBase, gazetteer and address management solutions. They supply software across the public and private sectors including over 100 Local Authorities, Fire & Rescue Services and Police Forces. In addition to software and data solutions, they offer a complete range of consultancy, training, bespoke development and project management.

Two More Fire and Rescue Services Select Aligned Assets’ Symphony Bluelight

Wiltshire and Dorset Fire and Rescue Services have both decided to procure the Symphony Bluelight Suite of gazetteer management software from industry leader Aligned Assets.

The system, which has been developed specifically for use in the emergency services, is designed to enable the creation of corporate gazetteers that can feed all frontline and back office systems with the Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase Premium – the Country’s most accurate and up to date address data.

Both Wiltshire and Dorset Fire and Rescue Services will be using the software as part of the Networked Fire Control Services Partnership (NFCSP) that will see collaboration between Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Services.

The four brigades will each maintain their own local control rooms, but are working together to create a greater level of resilience through the ability to be able to take emergency 999 calls for other Control Rooms within the partnership and mobilise appliances for them if necessary. As a consequence, they have all moved to using Symphony Bluelight in order to facilitate a greater level of interoperability.

“We now have over 30% of all English Fire and Rescue Services using products from the Bluelight range of gazetteer solutions,” explained Andy Hird, Managing Director of Aligned Assets. “With the only gazetteer software on the market designed specifically for, and in collaboration with the emergency services, we look forward to many more joining the Aligned Assets family.”

To find out more, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/bluelight

Shared Service Gazetteer Management From Aligned Assets Is Benefitting Two Oxfordshire Councils

South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils are using the Symphony iManage gazetteer management system from Aligned Assets to drive forward efficiency savings via its new shared service module.

By enabling easy access to multiple local authority gazetteers through the one user interface, one team can manage more than one authority's gazetteer data without the need for multiple applications.

The two councils have been able to merge their previously disparate gazetteer teams, simply selecting which gazetteer to manage via a drop-down menu within the software. In doing so they are able to save time, increase efficiency and dramatically cut both capital and revenue costs due to shared licensing, reduced infrastructure requirements and lower consultancy fees.

In addition to Symphony iManage, the councils are also using Aligned Assets’ Street Naming and Numbering module, enabling them to quickly and simply manage the complete lifecycle of naming a street or numbering a property. Symphony SNN comes complete with a shared service option to allow any street naming and numbering officer to move seamlessly between cases, irrespective of which authority they come from, and easily customise the software to allow the user to follow almost any working methodology they so choose.

“We looked at a number of different gazetteer suppliers, but the combination of price and quality made Aligned Assets the obvious choice,” explained Sally-Anne Worsley, Data Monitoring Manager for South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils.

“Aligned Assets have proved to be more than just a software supplier and have consistently demonstrated their willingness to work as partners to our two councils. The software is under constant development and importantly, this development is overwhelmingly driven by customer needs and requirements.”

The Aligned Assets pricing structure for shared services has been designed to better represent the economies of scale that shared services are intended to achieve. The pricing is no longer a flat fee per authority, but instead reflects the number of authorities involved.

To find out more, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/imanage

Aligned Assets To Develop GeoStore Spatial Data Warehouse

Aligned Assets and Pitney Bowes Software (PBS) are pleased to announce the technology transfer of PBS’s GeoStore Spatial Data Warehouse to the Woking-based gazetteer specialists.

As of March 2013, all support, account management, billing and future development passed to Aligned Assets, who have expressed their intention to invest extensively in the product.

GeoStore is a geographical data store that enables users to share geographical information across departments and with external organisations. It simplifies the administration, management and the import/publishing of spatial data, allowing this data to be easily integrated into both desktop and browser-based applications.

It is able to import, store, manage and publish common spatial formats such as Shapefiles, DWG and MapInfo TAB, as well as GML, XML and CSV.

Speaking of the transfer, Managing Director of Aligned Assets, Andy Hird said, “We are delighted to add the GeoStore application to our existing range of gazetteer solutions.”

“We have always focused on the corporate use of data in order for customers to make gains in efficiency, and through that save money whilst delivering a better service to the customer. What GeoStore can offer is exactly in line with this philosophy.”

“For existing GeoStore customers this is a very positive development as we are able to draw on our vast experience in developing industry leading software products, an experience from which GeoStore can only benefit.”

James Buckley, Senior Vice President & General Manager Customer Data and Location Intelligence at Pitney Bowes Software added, “We are thrilled to now have a solid future for GeoStore and our GeoStore customers. Aligned Assets brings a wealth of expertise in the spatial data management space and we too believe it is a great fit within the Aligned Assets portfolio”.

Aligned Assets will be engaging directly with every GeoStore customer to determine a development priority list and plans to hold the first user group meeting within the next few months.

For more information visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/geostore

Aligned Assets Business Data Helping to Locate Unbilled NNDR Properties

Due to the change in legislation surrounding the retention of business rates, Aligned Assets are set to make their business database available to business rates teams across local government.

The new legislation will see local authorities retaining up to 50% of all business rates collected and the Aligned Assets database can assist in locating unbilled businesses and thereby generating new revenue.

Containing over two million records and updated daily by a call centre of 65 people making in excess of six million validation calls each year, the business database is currently used by emergency services to assist in locating 999 calls made in commercial areas, and is also the source of directory information for organisations such as 118 118 and Bing.

Announced on 21st November 2012, the new policy will come into effect on 1st April 2013. According to Brandon Lewis MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

“The business rates retention scheme will enable local authorities to retain a large proportion of locally collected business rates to help fund the services they provide, thereby creating a direct link between business rates collected and local authority income, and reducing local authorities’ dependency on central government grants. The scheme will give all councils a strong incentive to go for growth and could add approximately £10 billion to the wider economy by 2020.”

“In 2011/12 there was over £21 billion in business rates after billing reliefs collected from approximately 1.8 million businesses,” explained Managing Director of Aligned Assets Andy Hird. “This equates to an average of £11,500 per business, which means that even if a council was to use our data and locate only one unbilled business, the return on investment would be almost 100%.”

To find out more, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/businessdata

ABOUT ALIGNED ASSETS
Aligned Assets are an industry leader in AddressBase, gazetteer and address management solutions. They supply software across the public and private sectors including over 100 Local Authorities, Fire & Rescue Services and Police Forces. In addition to software and data solutions, they offer a complete range of consultancy, training, bespoke development and project management.

Aligned Assets Present a Practical Strategy for Adopting AddressBase Premium

Gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets have released guidance to assist both public sector and private sector organisations in implementing AddressBase Premium from the Ordnance Survey.

With the majority of existing datasets such as AddressPoint, AddressLayer 2 and the NLPG being withdrawn in 2014, the document draws on the necessity for organisations to act sooner rather than later in their migration to AddressBase Premium.

Titled ‘A Practical Strategy for Implementing AddressBase Premium’, the document demonstrates how any organisation can start using AddressBase Premium without the immediate need to change their existing systems over to AddressBase-compatible versions.

It is these existing systems that present the main obstacle to change as they are often large, complex and critical to the organisation, yet will be based on older address datasets or sometimes no structured dataset at all. It is this issue that the document looks to address.

Andy Hird, Managing Director of Aligned Assets, explained more, “The process described involves initially bringing AddressBase Premium into an organisation and access being given to it via a browser based search engine. With this, technical staff can begin to familiarise themselves with the format and structure of the data, whilst non-technical staff can begin to adapt to elements such as UPRNs and property classifications.”

“Once in place, the process would move to using Aligned Assets’ data conversion software, Symphony iExchange, which can take AddressBase Premium and convert it into standard and non-standard formats. In doing so, changes to the AddressBase Premium data can be exported to the non-AddressBase systems, thereby keeping them updated.”

“This gives an organisation the benefits of AddressBase Premium but in a staged and controlled manner that does not result in major upheaval, and buys time for other suppliers to modify their systems to take native AddressBase data.”

‘A Practical Strategy for Implementing AddressBase Premium’ is available as a free download via the Aligned Assets website and is relevant to the emergency services, local and central government, the NHS and organisations across the private sector such as insurance, utilities and banking.

To find out more, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk or email solutions@aligned-assets.co.uk.

Shared Services Made Easy With Aligned Assets

With a dramatic increase in the number of shared services in local government, gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets have released a shared service version of their award winning gazetteer management system, Symphony iManage.

Designed to allow local authorities to easily manage multiple gazetteers through the same, user-friendly interface, Symphony iManage for shared services respects the GeoPlace requirement to retain separate gazetteer databases, but provides the convenience of working as though they were one.

In addition to Symphony iManage, their Street Naming and Numbering module now also comes complete with a shared service option to allow any street naming and numbering officer to move seamlessly between cases, irrespective of which authority they come from.

The Aligned Assets pricing structure for shared services has also been modified to better represent the economies of scale that shared services are intended to achieve. The pricing is no longer a flat fee per authority, but instead reflects the number of authorities involved and joint contracts or procurement.

“Everything we do at Aligned Assets is focused on providing solutions that people want and delivering them in ways that make them cost effective,” explained Managing Director of Aligned Assets, Andy Hird.

“There are already a number of local authorities benefiting from our shared service solutions, not only from the greater efficiencies created through the software, but also cost savings through the new pricing model.”

To find out more, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk

ABOUT ALIGNED ASSETS
Aligned Assets are an industry leader in AddressBase, gazetteer and address management solutions. They supply software across the public and private sectors including over 100 Local Authorities, Fire & Rescue Services and Police Forces. In addition to software and data solutions, they offer a complete range of consultancy, training, bespoke development and project management.