With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting every aspect of business and society, Hg is pleased to see that the businesses we back are providing the efficiency tools and expertise to help their customers best navigate this unique crisis and, in some cases, actively helping our frontline carers combat the impact of the virus.

There have been some impressive and often critical efforts all round and we are proud to present a few of these.

Allocate, a leading international provider of workforce and resource planning solutions, has been deployed to help solve any staffing issues at a number of the UK’s dedicated COVID-19 field hospitals, with Allocate’s HealthRoster Optima software being used to e-roster staff. The SaaS solution was deployed in just 9 days to London Excel as a starting point, and has been prepared to deliver rostering for up to 30k staff at the 4000-bed field hospital.

The Allocate team have been ready to provide 247 operational roster management both onsite and remotely – putting on significant extra staff to handle the system. Alongside these staff,  Hg assigned over 20 participants from the firm to help manage the rostering support centre which was set up to help nurses, physicians and other medical staff to manage their shifts.

Allocate responded to a further 7 field hospital requests in the UK and had other discussions in Germany and Australia. 

Furthermore, across the UK, NHS organisations added over 57,000 new staff to Allocate’s HealthRoster workforce technology platform after Allocate opened up free absence tracking to help provide better visibility of COVID-19 absence.

They have also created a dedicated COVID-19 hub for customers on the Allocate website.

Evaluate, a leading provider of commercial intelligence and predictive analytics to the pharmaceutical industry, co-hosted a virtual conference to bring together the life sciences industry to support the fight against COVID-19.

With physical conferences impossible, #PartneringAgainstCOVID19 was a unique, virtual-only event aimed to accelerate the industry’s ability to find the right partner in developing diagnostics, drug treatments and, ultimately, a COVID-19 vaccine.

The event took place from 20 April to 6 May 2020 and was a huge and unique effort to bring together a fragmented industry at this time of need.

The original target was to sign up 500 participants. This target was reached within the first three days of going live. In the end 3,200 participants from more than 80 countries and representing more than 2,140 life science companies came together. This resulted in more than 2,600 partnering meetings in just three days. 300 assets, 560 products, and 1600 services were discussed, with steps taken towards partnerships that will help slow and then defeat the spread of COVID-19.

Evaluate also publishes a comprehensive daily update on the COVID-19 crisis, bringing the numbers on new cases across the world alongside news and expert commentary – this is currently one of the leading resources publicly available on the situation.

Intelerad, a leading global provider of medical imaging software and enterprise workflow solutions, has committed to providing the radiology community with technology that makes a difference and information that really matters to their sector during this time. The new podcast series Rallying Against COVID-19 brings in experts and external guests to discuss hot topics including remote readings tips, innovative solutions to the COVID-19 challenges, and more.

Citation Group provides tech-enabled compliance and quality related subscription services to SMEs across the UK. During this crisis Citation are helping over 40,000 SMEs in the UK to navigate the HR and H&S issues related to COVID-19. Citation’s experts have also created an online hub and back-to-business toolkit for the next phase of lockdown. Both are updated with the latest government measures in the fight against the disease, including live Q&A sessions with experts.

Transporeon is a cloud-based logistics platform with strong network effects, connecting over 1,200 shippers and almost 100,000 carriers world-wide. Transporeon have developed an amazing online resource, including real-time cross-border traffic tracking, to help navigate the logistics industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes a number of services that Transporeon has made freely available during this time, such as free access to 3 weekly webinars with their supply chain experts; free access to the Transport Market Monitor (TMM) enabling access to current market trends and developments; free access to Ticontract Spot Tendering enabling quick access to freight capacity info; and free access to a new portal, Transporeon Insights, where the team curate relevant supply chain content and data on a daily basis for supply chain and logistics leaders.

F24, the pan European leading SaaS provider for proactive crisis management, emergency notification and critical communications, supports it’s more than 2500 customers in managing critical communication and processes during the pandemic.

With FACT24, F24 provides its customers a secure and reliable platform for emergency notification and crisis management to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. F24 provided free additional services during the pandemic for its FACT24 customers and also supported with additional advice, e.g. an ebook with most common use cases, a web-seminar for customers and additional customer support to ensure they receive the best possible service in these challenging times.

In addition F24 created a smart and simple method for recording and tracing personal contacts with it’s business messaging service eCall very quickly after the pandemic started. The solution is based on SMS and works without an app, which means it is very easy to access for everyone, e.g. in restaurants, shops or for companies to enable tracing of their employees personal contacts with the work environment.

During the pandemic F24 continued to deliver it’s customers reliable alerting and crisis management as well as business messaging services with a significant increase in usage, while for example the telecommunications industry has been under heavy strain and was reaching its limits in some cases especially during first months of the pandemic.

smartTrade

smartTrade have dedicated specific hardware to assist in the C19 research of Folding@Home, a distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics behind many diseases to help understand better the virus and, ultimately, to find a viable treatment.

Medifox

Medifox: The Medifox Connect product is free for 6 months at a time when visiting family in nursing homes or home care isn’t easy. Using its family portal, relatives can easily exchange personal messages, pictures and videos with loved ones.

Blick Rothenberg

Blick Rothenberg have created a guidance hub up-to-date with advice on tax, contracts, government schemes and cashflow management amongst many other topics.

Lyniate

Lyniate partnered with Nova Scotia Health Authority to facilitate faster delivery of negative C19 test results. Lyniate’s products can be used to enable workers to be screened to ensure a safe return to work and report the results to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention for analysis and action. Drew Ivan, Chief Product & Strategy Officer, also wrote about facilitating vaccine rollout.

Sovos

Sovos offered free filing support at the start of the crisis and ran a live blog in the spring and summer of COVID-related tax regulation changes around the world. Changes since are reported on their regulatory analysis feed by their global team of tax attorneys and analysts.

Litera

Litera is offering Litera Transact for free during the crisis, helping legal teams carry out a number of processes online, allowing them to work whilst reducing the need and risk of physical contact.

IRIS

IRIS have been updating its blog hub with practical advice on HR, Compliance, Payroll and Accounting for businesses and launched a free business-to-employee comms tool to help HR teams engage simply and securely with staff during COVID-19 isolation.

team.blue

team.blue helps over 2 million SMEs across Europe to create and maintain digital presence. This has proved to be crucial to keep businesses moving during the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm’s Italian division, Register, has been particularly active – also donating actively to heavily affected Italian regions.

Commify

Commify has been offering free SMS messaging to healthcare providers to make emergency communication easier.

Eidosmedia's

The speedy deployment of Eidosmedia’s mobile newsroom app has enabled news rooms to remote work during the crisis. EidosMedia have also been fundraising in its Milan office, collecting and donating around €13,000 euros to CESVI for the Hospital Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo.

Access Group

Access Group regularly updates their Covid information hubs for the sectors they serve including Health & Social Care, Hospitality and Not-for-profit. Practical guides, virtual events and blogs offer support for their customers’ fast adapting business models. The Access EarlyPay app gives employees instant access to earned pay as and when they need it, which reduces staff financial pressure, while employers see reductions in staff turnover.

Miratech

Mitratech have been rolling out new workflows free of charge for TAP Workflow Automation clients, helping clients manage the new world, including self-reporting COVID-19 cases, a remote work tracker, and travel approval requests. 

Endsleigh

Endsleigh will pay the excess for NHS staff during lockdown and they will pay no cancellation fees should they choose to cancel.

IT relation

IT Relation will allow customers to make hardware purchases now and only pay in 2021.

Achilles

Achilles have built an action plan for buyers needing better supply chain visibility during the crisis and beyond. Achilles has also created a COVID-19 resource centre and partnered with leading law firm, Schjødt, to offer customers free initial consultation on new legislation.

FE fundinfo
FE fundinfo provided free training for Financial Advisers using their FE Analytics tool, to help them advise investors during the financial market turbulence seen as a result of the pandemic. 1,700 Advisers were trained on how to use FE Analytics more effectively to give informed investment advice to their clients.

Admincontrol

Admincontrol (Visma) is offering its online portal products for free during this challenging time, to enable businesses to communicate through a secure and encrypted platform.