partnership…
Developing and fostering relationships with both customers and colleagues in the industry is the way that Fretwell-Downing works. It is a natural part of the philosophy of making ideas work in practice. In each of its specialist areas, the Group is in the business of building value-generating partnerships with:
- customers
- lead bodies
- technology providers
to provide effective solutions. This approach has generated a unique set of relationships within each of the Group’s main market areas, enabling an increasingly accurate understanding of market requirements.
high standards of service…
The company's commitment to customer care and quality provides a solid backcloth to every project. Fretwell-Downing has achieved quality certification to the BS EN ISO 9001 standard using the TickIT Scheme, as part of an on-going quality initiative to improve the company's products and services to customers. Every key business process - from product development, through support and customer services, to sales and administration, is regularly reviewed, documented and improved.
tradition:
The threefold Fretwell-Downing tradition outlined above is the product of commercial experience which spans well over half a century. The computing company was started in 1979 by Professor Anthony Fretwell-Downing, Chairman of the Group, as an offshoot of F Fretwell-Downing, a prestigious catering and event management company operating throughout the UK and renowned for quality service. Over the past 20 years, the strengths embodied within the Group have led to strong market operations in a number of specialist areas as follows:
digital library solutions…
In 1989, Fretwell-Downing acquired a computerised library management system (The Lending Library) to complement its product range in the education sector (see below). Responding to the emergence of new industry standards, the system was re-developed based on the Oracle RDBMS and OLIB was launched - the first integrated relational database library management system to be made available in the UK. OLIB now has a network of international distributors and a worldwide user base of over100 sites, challenging the longstanding market leaders.
integrated business process and online learning systems for education…
Fretwell-Downing was one of the first providers of student records systems for the Further Education sector, launching its College Management System (CMS) at the beginning of the 1980s. A period of rapid growth ensued in which the company’s reputation and expertise in FE were firmly established. The Education Business System, launched in 1995, is now the leading client-server college administrative system in the UK, embracing student records, financial management and decision-support functionality. Since 1995, the company has also been involved in collaborative research and development in the area of computer-mediated flexible and distance learning, integrated with management and teaching processes, leading to the present commercial development of the Learning Environment system, due for pilot release in 1999.
hospitality solutions…
Since launching the first production control and management information systems in the catering business in the early ‘80s, Fretwell-Downing Hospitality has continued to lead the market. In 1994, the company launched the UK’s first Windows-based food and beverage system, anticipating the wholesale move in the IT market place to Microsoft products. The ‘proVISION’ system is now Fretwell-Downing Hospitality’s core product and is targeted at retail and hospitality operators, and contract and staff catering operations alike. MICa continues to be regarded as the most comprehensive and flexible solution for larger catering operators, with particular strength in the NHS. More recently, Fretwell-Downing Hospitality was awarded the TRICAT contract to supply all of MoD forces, starting with the Royal Navy’s catering operations, both at sea and ashore, with a system based on proVISION.
network/technical services & facilities/business process management…
Knowledgeable and responsive services have always been an integral feature of Fretwell-Downing’s approach to doing business. Within the Group’s main market areas, delivery of technical services and management of business processes are now increasingly in demand. Likewise the onset of the digital economy, bringing with it the need for increasingly specialist skills in the area of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) and a concomitant lack of skills in the market place, has led to organisations seeking to outsource their IT requirements. Anticipating this development, since the mid ‘90s Fretwell-Downing has been developing its network services capability, comprising facilities management of IT infrastructure, network management, online services and consultancy. The company already has a well-established client base, including the first managed workspace connected to the Internet in the UK.