| Stakeholder |
Reason for engagement |
How we engage |
Recent impacts |
| Customers |
The Group’s success is dependent upon fulfilling customer requirements and its competitive advantage is maintained through understanding the forward needs of our customers and delivering solutions for those needs in the Group’s product roadmap. |
The Group seeks feedback on its solutions in order to understand and measure its performance through a Customer Advisory Board but and through its Customer Account Management processes. It takes forward requests for new solutions and enhancements to existing solutions. |
These processes have led to the Group being a recognised leader in certain commercial verticals and public sector. The short-term product roadmap is shaped largely from customer led requests with the long-term product roadmap being more “general market informed” but with detailed reference to internal and external research prior to any investment decision. |
| Staff |
The Group’s ability to fulfil customer requirements and develop and enhance its technologies relies on having talented and motivated staff. Motivation is possible where staff are engaged and where there is a congruence of objectives with those of the business. Good two-way communication is an essential element of aligning objectives. |
The Group’s interaction with its staff are managed centrally and delivered locally to be sensitive to local custom and law. The ELT and other media are used to communicate through the organisation with an open invitation to staff to ask questions of management that are not answered in the briefings. |
During the year, the Group has created policies designed to secure the business from the risk of key employee loss. It has aligned principles on contractual benefits where sensible and economic. The Board has taken the decision to publish gender pay information (at least internally) as part of its determination to provide equal opportunities and pay to all its staff. |
| Business partners |
Business partners are an essential element of the Group’s go-to-market strategy, providing the Group with a long standing stream of new business and recurring revenues. |
The Group employs Business Partner Managers who are key staff members, enabling our Business Partners to be successful through a mutually supportive relationship where the Business Partners have access to all elements of the Group’s operations. |
The Group has created a partner development programme, initiated in the UK (which is the only territory with present expertise in this channel to market), and designed to create a broader profile of Business Partners with the objective of creating collaborative relationships to drive incremental business into the Group. |
| Shareholders |
The Group must be supported by its shareholders if it is to execute its strategy fully. |
See Principle 2, above. The Board believes that the Group has successfully engaged with its shareholders in the past but that it needs to improve this further to regain confidence. |
The Group has engaged with its shareholders regularly during the year to try to keep them informed of issues that the Group has faced but has also taken counsel from them in order to inform some of the content and presentational aspects of the Group’s communications to enable shareholders to gain better insight into the group’s performance. |
| Communities |
It is important to be perceived as a reputable business that makes a positive contribution to local economies and is attractive as an employer and partner. |
Multiple activities to support fundraising for local charities and good causes. Participation in apprenticeship and other schemes to support and provide opportunities to young people. |
The Group is planning the initiation of an apprenticeship scheme. |
| Regulatory bodies |
The Group is required to comply with law and many regulatory standards from many regulatory bodies in many territories including but not limited to general corporate law, technology operating standards and corporate governance regulation. |
The Board has a framework in place designed to capture changes in regulation and operating standards across all of its territories including the membership of trade bodies, the use of outside counsel and expert advisory services and the employment of skilled staff with responsibility to remain current in their understanding of regulatory change. |
The EU regulations around GDPR have been a significant driver of activity during the year as law came into being during the year which was the culmination of much activity in the years prior to this law change. The FCA is shaping the design of the Group’s Accelerated Payment Facility which it is intending to bring to market in due course. |