Newsletter September 2008

Click here to view the September Newsletter

Welcome to the September issue of the Gladstone Newsletter!

Hello,

From the wonderful tally of gold, silver and bronze medals to the magnificent team spirit between athletes, team management and support staff, Gladstone wishes to heartily congratulate each and every athlete who took part at this year's Olympic Games in Beijing. In particular plaudits must go to Team GB (British Olympic Committee), the Irish Olympic Team and the Australian Olympic Committee. All athletes provided us with a truly wonderful experience during the month of August. As the games unfolded it became part of my morning and evening ritual at home in London, to watch the extraordinary feats of strength, endurance and sheer perseverance mastered by these athletes.

I have personally found it to be truly humbling to reflect upon the immense impact of the teams versus the individual. The team is where it really counts, and it really delivered over those 17 days, from the planning, preparation and attention to detail in day-to-day practice in both mind and body, to the final delivery on the track for those 10 seconds (well actually 9.69 seconds to be precise) at the men's 100M race. As one of the team managers was quoted as saying, it is the aggregation of those small improvements that make the overall difference between gold, silver and bronze.

It strikes me that the management of a truly great Olympic team has many similarities to the management of a modern business. At Gladstone we too are looking forward to our "9.69 seconds" of success this September at the Leisure Industry Week 2008 (LIW) exhibition in Birmingham, where we will unveil our new "industry redefining" membership management solution, Orbit™, to the independent gym sector.

This will be the ideal opportunity for our future customers within this important segment of the UK and Irish markets to see the results of our planning, preparation and attention to detail. I firmly believe that with Orbit we can demonstrate Gladstone's unique insight to the needs of the market. We have developed a solution that reinforces our business philosophy that software solutions should be powerful yet simple to use - in essence 'Simple Intelligence'.

At Gladstone we have invested considerable resources over the last two years to bring Orbit to fruition. For example, the current size of the Orbit™ development team of 21 specialists ranks larger than most of our competitors' entire complement of staff. The Orbit™ development team has been working seamlessly across the globe to create a leading-edge industry redefining business solution. From project management, User Interface (UI) design and advanced quality control processes in the UK, to high-level system architecture and design in Denmark, to detailed technology development and delivery by our offshore team, every element of our strategy has been to create a world-class solution for the independent gym market.

LIW will be a great opportunity for Gladstone to enable new customers to explore for themselves Orbit's simple intelligence. It is my firm belief that this solution will set the standard on what is achievable in terms of easy-to-use technology and after-sales service. We aim to redefine the traditional solutions across the market.
In our own way, and in our world, Gladstone is constantly striving to set a new world or an Olympic record. We're serious when we say that we want our current and future customers to award us that gold medal!

Kind Regards,

Dr Said Ziai
CEO
Gladstone plc

Click here to view the September Newsletter

8 September 2008