Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Bisnode
In addition to the information supplied to you
by letter, I would like to inform you about the current status
of the implementation of the new Companies House computer system.
As you might be aware, the implementation of the system with regards
to Companies House's own website distribution was relatively floorless—considering
Companies House history with IT projects.
However, for users of Companies House information
via Dissemination Agents (DAs) the implementation has been very
bad. In summary, re-users have not received a "mortgage"
(charges registered at Companies House) file since CHIPS went
live 25/02/2008 and errors are still being still reported on the
Directors and Directory files.
Attached you find a status report. DAs have
required Companies House to produce such a report. As you can
see, the vast majority of deliveries has problems. Especially,
there are timing problems and our customers are receiving the
data considerably later than they are used to.
Below, I have added an apology about the mortgage
product, explaining what went wrong. As indicated in the letter
from 20 March, the problems were predictable: Companies House
did not focus on DAs and re-users when planning the implementation,
and thereby only provided a smooth service to Companies House'
direct users.
Please accept this as evidence in addition to
the letter from 20 March 2008.
March 2008
Letter from the Director of Customer Delivery
Dear Customers,
I must apologise for the continued problems
with the bulk mortgage product. The bottom line is that we have
not yet managed to solve the issues that you identified when we
first sent out files during the last week in February. Our technical
experts are currently working on analysing the scale of the issues
to provide assurance that we understand the full extent of the
problem. I hope that this work will give us a clear prognosis
as to how we can solve the various issues, and by when.
We will provide a further update at noon tomorrow.
Bulk Outputs Status Reports (14/03/08)
Bulk Product
| Description | Progress Report
| Status |
100 | Daily Directory
| File going out automatically.
1 call logged about address format— 245093
| Amber |
| 191 | Time Critical file |
Automatic delivery. No issues raised to date |
Green |
| 192 | Disqualified Directors
| File delivered 10/03/08
2 calls logged internally 243897, 243306. 1 customer call 244362
With AMC
| Amber |
| 195 | LLP Snapshot | 2 calls logged from customers about the content—incorrect counts and a missing company—Assyst calls -244938 and 244408—with AMC
| Amber |
| 197 | Daily Liquidation |
Call logged by a customer—Ian has investigated and it needs to go to a DBA to see the data on the database. Call ref 244871. With DBA-DEV
| Green |
| 198 | Daily Directors | Radical fix still needs to be tested and implemented to cope with weekend/multiple days work. Until then, will hold back Tuesday's product but deliver the rest automatically. 2 calls logged by a customer. A field is not being populated to say where the update came from (288 or 363etc). It is the on-line code that is wrong not prod 198. Workaround implemented last night and no offending records in today's file. Assyst calls 244218 and 244365
| Amber |
| 201 | Daily Mortgage | Not going out currently. File from the startof CHIPS have been produced. They seem OK. We have separated off the dodgy 4052s. Problem with the file produced on the Monday after the weekend working.(9500). File is too big and contains far too much data. Call logged
ICC have successfully loaded 9495. We have sent 9496-9499 out to customers.
Lots of calls logged as a result of sending out 9495-9499. Possible date issue for satisfaction, duplicate records (but we think that is as per spec). Investigation ongoing as we need to bottom this out.
| Red |
| 203/204 | Gazettes | All sent out on Friday. Gaz trans have appeared in prod 100. No further issues reported on the Bulk output product. Today's gazette file has been run and delivered to customers.
| Amber |
| |
| |
| 
