Central’s 2021 highlights and festive information.

As the year is coming to a close and we’re looking ahead to 2022, we wanted to take a moment to step back, reflect, and appreciate all the good things that have happened over the last 12 months here at Central.

And we’d like to take this opportunity to say a massive ‘thank you’ to all our staff, clients, and friends of the business for being a part of our journey.

Please note that we will remain fully open during the Christmas period – with 24/7 access provided to customers with 24/7 support as part of their package.

Rebranding Central

To kick things off, we couldn’t talk about our annual highlights without mentioning the rebrand we undertook in the first half of the year.

As well as revamping our aesthetic – shifting to our monochrome colour palette – we also reworked our website content, tone of voice, to create a more accessible stage for our ‘knowledge’ pieces. This means we now have a hub of industry insight, blogs, and case studies.

Celebrating our 30^th birthday

2021 has been a milestone year for us, seeing us celebrate three decades of trading!

We’ve been helping businesses nationwide with their technology needs since 1991 and have been the trusted partner for over 2,000 clients with their IT and support needs – including SMEs across all sectors, as well as a large proportion the housing association market.

We’re extremely proud of our heritage and enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane in our blog post, from earlier in the year.

Launching our employee spotlight

For anyone who knows the Central brand, you’ll be aware that people are at the heart of everything we do. We pride ourselves on being thoughtful, reliable, resilient, gritty, and assured, but all of this is made possible by the people who are at the very heart of the operation – our staff.

That’s why we’ve recently launched our Q&A series which showcases the humans behind the brand. We’re so lucky to have such a talented bunch of individuals working at Central, and we want our customers and prospects to be able to get to know them a little more, too.

Being shortlisted in the Housing Digital Innovation Awards

With over 30 years’ in the industry, it comes as no surprise that we’re deeply passionate about the work we carry out for our clients. We have extensive experience within the social housing sector, too, and are a trusted partner for many providers in the UK – including Regenda, Eastlight Community Homes, Bron Afon, and Horton Housing.

This saw us make the shortlist for the Chartered Institute of Housing’s Northern Awards, along with the ‘Best technology Partner’ category in the Housing Digital Innovation Award – and we’re looking forward to the awards night in February 2022, fingers crossed for a win!

Donating essential food items to Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH)

As part of our birthday celebrations, we wanted to give back to charity, which saw us donate 30 bags of food to the RBH’s Kirkholt, Smallbridge, and Freehold community pantries.

And in the words of our co-owner, Jo Berry: “We genuinely care about making a difference. Providing services to those operating in the not-for-profit sector is really important to us, and that’s why charity work [has formed] part of our 30^th birthday celebrations.”

Ramping up our service desk offering

You may or may not have heard about our collaboration with HaloITSM, but for us, this was a key partnership from the year which has really helped us to deliver more value for our clients.

This has enabled us to strengthen our customer communications by offering more of a self-service approach. In addition, it also integrates with our automated monitoring software that repeatedly assesses the performance of our customers’ systems – helping our engineers to prioritise and streamline tasks. This investment is in line with us always keeping ahead of the curve and taking away the pain associated with IT.

While there’s another year on the horizon, our mission remains the same – to  be at the heart of business and to restore organisations’ faith in IT, and we look forward to supporting our clients and partners in 2022 and beyond.

All that’s left to say is a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our team to yours, and we look forward to sharing more news and insights.

If you’d like to find out more about how Central can help your organisation with its IT and technology requirements, head over to our dedicated website.