Spring 2010

We have hit the ground running in 2010 with the arrival of 2 team members: Rebecca Smith, our new Project Manager, and Joanna Hawkins who has joined Elouise and Zulay in the Membership Services team.

Our relocation to Clarendon Road was a big change, but we now feel thoroughly at home. Our new office has been now personalised with MES red!

Our move to Turnpike Lane has also provided new opportunities to work more closely with our parent company, ERS. We are currently supporting Unison, Britain's largest public sector trade union, with their General Secretary election. ERS are running this election and MES is working in tandem with them to provide a full voter profiling service to help Unison to better understand non-voters.

February brought a productive and enjoyable User Group for our existing and potential Data Support Service clients. We had a full turnout from MES staff along with representatives from CACI, our sister organisation Xpress and of course parent company ERS (including the chairman Mike Burdett). Oh, and we had 40+ clients too! It was great to put some faces to names and some really interesting ideas came up in discussion. As ever, these ideas will contribute to our next major version release.

The User Group was a great way to get to know a little better some of our more recent Data Support Service clients. A warm welcome to those who have joined us from the end of 2009 until now. We have 7 new clients over London and the North West.

At the time of writing we have 51 clients using the system and looking after over 400,000 members.

We have recently launched version 3.1 of our database, which has the following new features:

• Complex Filters - Search using sets of filters to make searching for specific groups quicker.
• Monitor Settings - Change the settings for your 1-click Monitor report
• Electoral voting method analysis - Record (and compare) the way in which elections are carried out.

As regular visitors to the website will have noticed, we have recently had a redesign to bring our website into line with what we are about and the services that we offer. We hope that you like it and if you have any ideas for other things that you would like to see on here or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

As we move towards 6th May, there is election fever and we are all enjoying the atmosphere of anticipation generated in our new location at Electoral Reform Services HQ. It's very exciting to be in the thick of what looks to be a hard-fought election!