BigChange became corporate partners of Transaid in 2018, providing funding, auction prizes and organising events to raise the charity’s profile.
Martin is an ambassador for Transaid, which works with partners and governments to solve transport challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. Its goal is to transform lives through safe, available and sustainable transport.
It has been a pleasure to work with a charity that shares so many of the same core values and has the same “family” feel.
Back Up is a UK charity dedicated to supporting people affected by spinal cord injury.
The charity provides crucial services for families. Someone is permanently paralysed every four hours in the UK, and Back Up provides everything from mentoring and guidance to support on finding wheelchair and sourcing carers.
There are currently around 80 people in Leeds being treated for motor neurone disease (MND).
The Leeds Hospitals Charity aims to raise £5m to build a specialist MND care centre in Leeds to give people with MND the best quality of life.
The Rob Burrow Centre would see all MND services housed under one roof for the first time.
Rob Burrow is a former Leeds Rhinos player who has been courageously sharing his story of motor neurone disease since he was diagnosed at the age of 37.
So far around £2m has been raised, so there is still a long way to go to reach the £5m target, and Martin hopes to raise awareness of the cause.
The mental health of Martin, his family, friends and colleagues is at the top of his list of priorities.
Martin is therefore pleased to support the important work of Mind, the mental health charity.
Mind provides advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem, and campaigns to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding.
We never truly know what’s going on inside someone’s head. This means we must all act with kindness and compassion towards others, and try to educate ourselves about the best way to handle a mental health crisis.
Martin and the team at BigChange are proud to support Beechwood Cancer Care, which provides an essential role in supporting those with life-limiting conditions.
Beechwood, based in Cheshire, specialises in all kinds of support to those suffering from cancer, as well as their relatives and carers.
Gym equipment repair specialist Upholstery2u is using the latest BigChange technology to streamline workflows and boost customer service levels.
Supplied by BigChange, the complete job management platform dynamically schedules work for a nationwide team of upholsterers which is shared, via an app, to mobile phones that synchronise in real-time with the back-office solution.
Since implementing BigChange, Upholstery2u has seen a marked improvement in its SLA reporting and customer feedback and has also reduced the administrative resource required to manage the mobile operation.
“We chose BigChange as it was relevant to our industry with many features that suit our specific needs,” commented Daniel Boyle, Managing Director of Upholstery2u. “Having said that, it is also extremely user-friendly and flexible which means we can make changes and tweaks if we need to.
“Since implementing BigChange we have noticed a difference in every aspect of the business,” he continued. “BigChange takes care of the routine, time-consuming tasks, which allows us to focus on what we do best – getting the job done and keeping our customers happy.
“Using BigChange we can automatically schedule and track our team. In turn, they have more control over their workload with job completion reporting, photo sharing and stock requests, all available through the app on their phone. Our SLA monitoring and customer service is better, and customers can self-serve with live tracking and completion reports.”
Daniel Boyle, Managing Director of Upholstery2u
Upholstery2u provides on-site upholstery repair services for gyms across the UK. With a fleet of mobile workshops in customised MWB vans, U2U repairs and replaces damaged pads on gym equipment minimising downtime and disruption for gyms and their users.
U2U also offers annual maintenance contracts and in-house repair services.
Working with names such as Energie, JD Gyms and Total Fitness, Upholstery2u makes around 10,000 site visits a year looking after hundreds of pieces of gym equipment.
Customer quotations, completion reports and invoices are all automatically produced and customers can monitor progress in real-time and provide feedback through the platform.
Accessible 24/7, from any internet-enabled device, BigChange has also enabled managers at Upholstery2u to take back control of the business rather than focus on day-to-day administration.
Performance reports, business metrics and forecasting are all available at the click of a button which it hopes will fuel future growth.
An engineer for Upholstery2u uses a BigChange tablet to manage their jobs for the day.
Dell showcases entrepreneurs using innovative technology to solve their business problems.
In 2009 I was approach by Dell, who were on the hunt for entrepreneurs who had taken risks and ‘taken their own path’ in life to create successful businesses, against all the odds.
Dell knew about Masternaut, since we used their servers and technology at the Masternaut data centres.
Dell’s vision was to launch a bold marketing campaign across the UK, showcasing how entrepreneurs had used their technology in an innovative way.
Initially shortlisted among a whole group of entrepreneurs, I was chosen to be a Dell ‘Hero’ alongside people such as Tony Wheeler (founder of Lonely Planet) and Richard Reed (co-founder of Innocent Smoothies).
Dell launched ‘Take Your Own Path’ in October 2009 and it was an incredible opportunity for both myself and my business.
For the first time in my life, giant-sized versions of me were spotted in airports, railway stations, on bus shelters and on billboards all over the UK. Funnily enough – I appeared next to Cheryl Cole on one of the billboards.
The campaign was also launched online plus adverts in newspapers such as The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian.
Then in 2010, I was invited to feature in the launch of the Australian version of the campaign – since we had recently opened an office in Sydney.
Taking part in Dell’s Take Your Own Path was an incredible experience. My message to other entrepreneurs and business people is to jump at the opportunities like this that your suppliers and partners can provide. PR really is an essential ingredient for your success.
Martin Port founded vehicle tracking solution Masternaut in 2002. He sold part of the business in 2009 and fully exited the company in 2011, by which point Masternaut had grown to £22m annual turnover.
At the time of the sale in 2011, Bill Henry, the new Masternaut Group Chief Executive Officer, commented:
“Martin’s drive and his belief in the broad business benefits of telematics galvanised both Masternaut and the whole telematics industry…It has been a phenomenal success story.
“On behalf of the team at the new Masternaut, I would like to sincerely thank Martin for what he has done to raise the profile of telematics and the benefits across industry and more recently for his support as we combined our two UK businesses.”
