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Wrap Up of 2011

Vicinitee has been re-designing and re-engineering its product range throughout the year, taking advantage of the relentless wave of innovation in the world of software and hardware.

Key areas we're focussing on are: Creating the highest quality, vibrant, interactive and regularly updated content.

- Creating the highest quality, vibrant, interactive and regularly updated content.

- Evolving our market-leading property management tools.

- Developing an integrated, engaging, mobile platform for Vicinitee.

- Moving our technical infrastructure to the 'Cloud'.

Community Content. Over the years Vicinitee has learnt a lot about the information and services that users of our Building Communities like and respond too. In redesigning the core templates that allow us to provide exceptional value to our clients we've focussed on surfacing (in the jargon du jour) the most desirable content. Throughout, we've aimed to enable users to access content as quickly as possible. In fact, in Vicinitee V3.5, most content is available within just one click.

We've also responded to the wishes of our suppliers and partners, whether they be entertainment venues, retailers or restaurateurs and provided them with enhanced, richer, more expansive pages to market and promote themselves.

And on top of this, we're adding a social layer to all our content, with pervasive integration with viral tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

Providing high quality community content in a manner that users will actually use is harder than it looks. Spending tens of thousands of pounds on sites that draw little traffic is easy. Vicinitee understands the financial realities of modern business, and aims to provide the very best value for money possible.

Property Management Tools. Vicinitee has always been known for providing high quality, good value property management tools to deal with issues such as Visitor Management, Permits to Work, Licence for Alterations, Helpdesks and Loading Bay Management. At scale: in 2011 we will handle some 2 million visitors to our clients properties and tens of thousands of Permits, Helpdesk Requests and Loading Bay Bookings.

Vicinitee Tools are available to Building Managers, Occupiers and 3rd Party Suppliers. Across the board, roughly 50% of all visitors are pre-booked in by occupiers and a third of all permits are pre-requested by contractors. The saving of man hours to building management teams is considerable.

The technology available to provide these tools over the internet continues to develop rapidly. Vicinitee's approach is not just to keep up, but to lead in this area. As such we've been redeveloping from the ground up our management tools to be faster, more flexible, more robust and altogether more enjoyable to use than ever. This is a significant endeavour, the benefits of which will become apparent to our clients during 2012. We're really looking forward to rolling out these new tools starting in the New Year. 

Mobile. The single most important technology trend is the move to making content and services available through mobile devices. For example, 45% of consumers use their smartphones in the shopping process, and 7% of overall traffic to e-commerce sites is from a mobile device. Unfortunately, at present only 17% of e-commerce websites are mobile enabled. Expect massive change in this area in 2012.

It is not just shopping that will be affected by the growth in mobile. In fact the impact on business is likely to be truly transformational with it becoming routine to access data, manage processes and consume services from mobile devices.

Vicinitee has been working hard to imagine the future. It is a nascent field, and no off the shelf roadmap is available, but as a company we are committed to leading the way in this field. Expect interesting announcements during 2012.

Cloud Computing. Vicinitee is intent on ensuring our services are always available, wherever anyone has an internet connection. And not only available but available at the highest speed with the absolute minimum of downtime. To achieve this we are working through a migration of our technical infrastructure to 'The Cloud'. Wikipedia explains the Cloud as follows: 'Cloud computing is a marketing term for technologies that provide computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. A parallel to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid, wherein end-users consume power without needing to understand the component devices or infrastructure required to provide the service.'
In essence this move enables us to provide clients with an optimal service, and the ability to scale up as required. Mission critical services deserve mission critical levels of support. And we provide that.

And to you, our clients - A big thank you.This year we've launched or redesigned retail sites for One New Change in London, the Bullring in Birmingham, Silverburn in Glasgow and the massive Liverpool ONE.

New commercial work this year has included Paternoster Square, The Heron Tower, Cannon Place, Devonshire Square, Cannon Bridge House, Riverbank House and a new site for 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin).

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