Your Telephone Answered With The Gentle Touch

You may already know that Clarendon provide a remote telephone answering service. Our trained staff will answer all of your calls when you are unavailable and we put the emphasis on "trained" staff because of the many different types of client that we look after.

Whilst the majority of our clients are commercial businesses where their typical callers may be their clients, their propects, their business partners, and their families, many of our clients run businesses that help people in distress.

For example, these clients include medical services, counselling services and charities and also legal and accountancy firms where some of their callers may have recently suffered financial problems, employment issues or bereavement.

Most people calling under these circumstances will never leave a message on a faceless answer phone.

At Clarendon, we understand that these calls need to be handled sensitively, responsibly and professionally.

If we can help you by answering your calls when you are unavailable, call Candy Woodington on 01865 910100 or email: newsletter@clarendon-enterprise.co.uk.

Client Success Story: The Bushcraft Company

The Bushcraft Company delivers outdoor education programmes to many of the country’s top independent and state schools, for students aged 8 to 18. They also run weeklong holiday camps during the Summer and three day residential camps during half-terms and all other school holidays.

The title "Client Success Story" is particularly appropriate. Before April 2009, the origins of The Bushcraft Company was run by Alex and Alice working at their kitchen table. In April, they moved into a two person office space in Oxford in Prama House.

Less than a year later, they now occupy 3 offices with 14 full time employees based in Oxford and 20 part-time employees based in the field. Their clients include over 100 independent state schools who send their pupils on their programmes at regular intervals.

With their programmes running in 3,000 acres of ancient woodland at Cornbury Park, they will be relocating their company and basing their operations onsite. You may ask why we are featuring a client that will soon be leaving us? The answer is simple, Clarendon office space and conference rooms have been an essential part of their journey from a startup business to their amazing success.

"Establishing your own offices is a nightmare," comments Alex McBarnet, "from telephones, communications, office infrastructure, interior design, layout, and fit out, the logistics of setting up offices are time-consuming, frustrating and they pull you away from doing your real job. Moving into Clarendon’s Prama House was a breeze. We signed the deal on a Monday and were up and running on the Tuesday. It also provided the perfect environment for recruitment and interviews and, as we expanded the business, Clarendon helped us set up our new offices in less than 24 hours! We simply couldn’t have grown our business this fast without Clarendon."

To watch the 3 minute video about The Bushcraft Company that was broadcast on ITV last year, please click here.

Partnership With The Enterprise Pavilion In Poole

Clarendon are delighted to announce a new partnership with The Enterprise Pavilion (eP). The eP is a unique, independent initiative to develop, attract and retain new creative businesses in the South West.

Based on the campus of the Arts University College at Bournemouth, the Enterprise Pavilion offers affordable and flexible high quality studio accommodation and office space Bournemouth as part of a business incubation package for up to the first 2 years of a new startup business.

Four months before their expiry period, these businesses will be invited to visit Clarendon’s Bristol & West House and to plan their gradual transfer into their first independent and professional office, but at introductory rates that their business can afford.

We are delighted to be helping the local community establish and nurture new creative talent around Bournemouth by offering affordable office space and conference rooms.

Your Top 10 Favourite iPhone Apps

After last month’s article featuring ABBYY’s Business Card Reader, we’ve been inundated with your favourite applications and so we have tried to pick a few applications from the different areas that you love:

phone.tvcatchup.com – Live Digital Television on your iPhone!
BBC iPlayer – The BBC iPlayer at your fingertips
Wunder Radio – The world’s radio stations including all of the mainstream BBC stations and local independents (like Jack FM in Oxfordshire)
Spotify – streaming over 7 million songs direct to your iPhone in great quality!
Hoot Suite – one of the many Twitter apps for the iPhone – you can tweet on the move
Facebook – access and update your facebook account wherever you are. (Also see the LinkedIn, Flickr, Skype apps as well)
National Rail – train timetables with live arrivals and departures information from every railway station across the UK (Also see British Airways for flight info)
Traffic Info – one of many live traffic updates on all major routes throughout the UK
The Orb – one of many applications that enable you to stream your office files to your iPhone from your office network
Office² Plus – Create and edit Word and Excel documents and share them "in the cloud".

Plus at least 20 games from Ronnie O'Sullivan's Snooker, Tiger Woods Golf, Real Racing, Flick Fishing etc (does anyone do any work ?!) - but clearly we’ve barely scratched the surface!

Many thanks to all of you who took part.

New Client Focus - Essential Treatments

We are delighted to welcome Essential Treatments, to Prama House, our Oxford office space, in March.

Tara Hunt is an experienced Remedial Massage Therapist using a combination of Hot StoneFusion, Trigger Point Therapy and relaxing Swedish massage techniques to help you relieve pain and de-stress.

She will be providing Facials, Manicures and Pedicures and waxing in mid-March as well as selling facial products and self massage aids.

She will be offering special rates for all clients or prospects of Clarendon during March, including £10 off your first massage appointment, and half-price facials, manicures and pedicures.

Standard massage prices are: 30min for £35, 60min for £45, 90min for £60.

To book your appointment, please call Tara on 01865 399 648.

Client Update - Allen Associates Expands Team Again

Oxford-based recruitment agency Allen Associates has expanded its team for the second time in 2010 by appointing two trainee consultants. A total of four new staff - all of whom are graduates - have joined the company since the beginning of the year.

Allen Associates moved to larger offices at East Point Business Park in January to make room for the new growth. The team (left) are pictured in The Business Lounge by Clarendon.

"Talented people are at the heart of our business. Attracting and retaining the highest calibre of employees is crucial to our continued success," says Kate Allen, Managing Director, Allen Associates. "Alison Timms and Felicity Gilbert both bring valuable experience to their new roles."

If you have a news update for the Clarendon Newsletter, please email us at: newsletter@clarendon-enterprise.co.uk

Clarendon Offer - 500 Great Reasons To Promote Clarendon

This month, we have a fantastic offer for you.

If you introduce the Clarendon team to a new client, who subsequently signs a contract for an office for six months or more, Clarendon will reward you by paying you a staggering £500 or 5% of the contract value (whichever is the highest!)

WOW - now, that is worth having!

As with all of our offers and features, terms and conditions apply.

If you have a likely candidate, please email us at: newsletter@clarendon-enterprise.co.uk

Competition Time - "Beware The Ides of March!"

February's Valentine Competition Results:
Thanks for all of the entries to the "Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla" competition. The correct answer was Rudolph Valentino. There were some interesting wrong entries and, as far as we know, this is not Jeremy Clarkson's real name, but many thanks for guessing!

Congratulations to our winner, Fiona Blake from Media Model Management Ltd, who will receive her prize courtesy of our Bournemouth Business Centre.

March Competition - "Beware The Ides of March"
Julius Caesar (as played by Ciaran Hinds in the epic "Rome" TV series) was murdered by Brutus and his accomplices after being warned to beware the ides of March.

To win a £25 Marks and Spencer voucher, simply answer the following question:

According to William Shakespeare, who delivers the famous "Friends, Romans, and Countrymen" speech after Caesar's assassination? (Oh good, another topical question!)

Email: newsletter@clarendon-enterprise.co.uk and we will choose the winner from the correct entries on Friday March 12th 2010.

About Clarendon Enterprise Centre

Since 1998, Clarendon Enterprise Centre has provided businesses with friendly, hassle free and cost-effective serviced, managed and virtual office space, office space Bracknell and across the south.