The Mayor’s charity at Colchester Borough Council got an unexpected boost this month. The surprise donation of six bottles of champagne from A Recipe For Success was to celebrate Colchester Borough Council becoming the first customer of The Meeting Factory.

The IT solutions company, based in Ipswich, launched the new meeting management software at the t-gov exhibition in London in April and is already enjoying considerable interest from local authorities across the UK.

The Meeting Factory is a paperless agenda and meeting management system that allows users to publish agendas, reports and minutes on the internet, intranet and via email simultaneously – at the touch of a button.

For local authorities, who convene public and committee meetings almost daily, the web-based system offers a modern, flexible way of publishing public information. The fully integrated system is fast and easy-to-use, resulting in cost-savings for local authorities as well as providing a more transparent and accessible communication platform for the general public.

Amanda Chidgey, democratic services manager at Colchester Borough Council, said The Meeting Factory has already revolutionised the way her team works.
“We had a very limited system before which enabled us to publish all our agendas and minutes on the internal intranet. It was a bit clunky but it also meant we had to have a separate process for publishing on the internet.

“Apart from the duplication of effort, we also had to delete the previous set of agendas, reports and minutes before we could publish the most recent set as we had limited capacity available.

“The Meeting Factory enables us to publish both internally on the intranet and externally on the internet in one hit and it automatically files all the decisions that have been taken previously thereby building up a valuable historical database.”

Jeff Hume, director at A Recipe For Success, said the company was delighted a borough council on its doorstep was leading the way with The Meeting Factory.

“Working in partnership with Colchester Borough Council and The University of Essex has accelerated the development of The Meeting Factory,” added Jeff.

“Adopting a 100% web browser based solution is already proving decisive; allowing The Meeting Factory to be rolled-out quickly and with minimum disruption, while simultaneously delivering service improvements and efficiency savings.”

Councillor Ray Gamble, the Mayor of Colchester, said: “I was surprised and very appreciative of the generous donation of a case of champagne from A Recipe For Success. It will be used as raffle prizes at various Mayor’s charity events.”