It’s certainly been a year-end to remember.
In response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, not only has the entire company moved to working remotely, but last minute legislative changes by the government meant that a lot of extra development was needed.
Our biggest achievement was the speed in which we developed and deployed the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme module. Having received the technical guidance on the evening of March 26th, by the afternoon of March 28th it had been coded, tested and successfully deployed with full documentation.
This module allows payments to be processed to workers who have been marked as furloughed, through the generation of ‘furloughed worker timesheets’, and was a tremendous effort by the development, QA and training team for such a quick turnaround. Despite not being a standard legislative update we made the decision to provide this module completely free of charge to our customers, to support them through this period of rapid change.
Of course, the module will continue to evolve as new guidance is released.
The achievement certainly highlights that as a company we are fortunate to be in a sector where working remotely does not hinder our ability to operate as normal.
Indeed, most of our customers have not even realised we have been working remotely, with our support team receiving glowing feedback as usual. Some quotes included:
“Ryan helped very quickly and did exactly what was needed. Perfect customer service.”
“Big thankyou to Elina for being very patient with me on my first day of home working. Very best wishes to all at Merit, stay safe, end of year is nigh!!”
“Most helpful and clear advice was given, being informed along the way.”
With many of our customers now also working remotely, deploying the year-end updates was certainly more challenging than normal in some cases, however it was very positive to see how everyone was adapting to the situation at hand and working together where needed.
Our Managing Director, Ben Noden, reflected on the last few weeks by saying: “As this is always the busiest time of the year for us, it was certainly a big ask for the team to manage the additional workload of year-end, whilst also transitioning to working from home, but I’m delighted to say we pulled together and exceeded our targets. Every department has, as always, given it their all and the feedback from our customers has been fantastic.”
Sam Radion, Sales Director, added: “We have to extend a massive thank you to our customers for their positive support during this unusual time. Year-end is always very busy, and this year has certainly been no different, but the end result highlights the great things that can happen with the type of strong partnerships we build with our clients.”