Just another Friday at ABG

Welcome back to a new Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! Today we want to recap the events from this week, go over some things you can expect to see next week and then we’ll fill you in on some company updates from our Month End Meeting.

Let’s start with the blog post we featured this week that concentrated on employee health and wellness. Did you know that active, healthier employees make more productive employees? Well, it’s true! Some employees get so caught up in staring at their computer screen for 8 hours a day that it causes them to be unhappy and it ultimately drags down morale. One way to bring those employees back to life is to institute some health and wellness initiatives. Without them, your business might begin to suffer. Check out the article because it talks about some of the major implications associated with unhealthy employees.

While we do not have a formal health and wellness program in place here at ABG Capital, we have instituted “Tend to you at 10 and 2” breaks. These breaks encourage our employees to get up from their desks twice a day and go outside to walk around, play catch, roller skate; whatever they like as long as it’s some kind of physical activity to get the blood moving!. We also recently set up a basketball hoop that employees are free to use at any time. Our company Portal is also stocked with plenty of handy health and wellness information that is always available to our employees.

Staying active at ABG Capital

Here are two great posts that we have coming up next week on the ABG Capital blog:

  • Does Your Business Need A VP Of Customer Success? – Self-centered organizations often define jobs by their internal function, but cutting-edge companies are taking their viewpoint to heart by creating roles that are truly customer-centered.
  • Enhancing Customer Experience Using Big Data – Large amounts of data generated through client interaction allow businesses of all size to gain a better understanding of their customers. Amazon’s “suggestions” are just one example of how well this can work.

Shannon Hogan, Inspira Customer Service RepNow for some important ABG Capital updates! This week was the official start day of a new Customer Service Representative for Inspira and her name is Shannon Hogan. Welcome to the team, Shannon!

While we’re on the topic of new employees, Justin Sparks celebrated his 30 day milestone and had his Lunch with Leadership with Jeff and Jason Tapolci at the Rivers Club!

ABG Capital Lunch with Leadership

Here are a few announcements from our Month End Meeting:

  • February Employee of the Month – Collin Ballantine
  • February Honorable Mention – The Inspira Call Center
  • March Spotlight of the Month – Tyler Weimerskirch
  • Events coming up:
    • Our Annual Kickball Game will be held on April 11th
    • Our Annual Volunteering event at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies will be held on May 23rd.

We also want to mention that we had a great time with the students from the Entrepreneurship Program at Canon Mac High School today. They visited our office last year and we’re so happy they returned again this year! Here are a few pictures from their visit:

Canon Mac Visits ABG Capital

Canon Mac Visits ABG Capital

We even brought out the Cruisin’ Cooler for them!

Thanks for stopping by for another great Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post. We hope to have you back again next week!

Just another Friday at ABG

Here we are again wrapping up yet another great week at ABG Capital. We have some great news to share so let’s not waste any more time and get right into it!

 

Our newest employee, Kimmie Rivetti, had her lunch with leadership this week! This is a great thing that we do so the new employees get to spend some quality time with Jeff and Jason Tapolci. It’s important to them they that the get to know their employees on a more personal level. Check out the amount of support their picture got when we posted it on our Facebook Page!

Yvonne Iwanejko

Yvonne Iwanejko, our newest employee!

While we were celebrating with one employee for making it to her one month mark, we were also welcoming another new employee into the VoIP Innovations Porting Department. Her name is Yvonne Iwanejko and we’re excited to have her with us! In the next few weeks we will be introducing to you to even more new people who are joining our team. 2014 is going to be a year of major growth for ABG Capital and its portfolio companies and it’s going to be exciting!

This week we also posted a great article on how to develop a great corporate culture. At ABG Capital, we take our culture very seriously. I’m not saying that we have a serious culture; I’m saying that the founders of this company have put a great deal of dedication and passion into developing a unique culture. What is your company doing to provide a positive culture for its’ employees? Share it with us in the comment section below!

Next week you can expect to see another great post that talks about the Return on Investment (ROI) that you can expect to see with professional development. Anyone can have fun at work, but are they having fun in a way that enhances their skills and ultimately can increase the profits for your company? This article will give you more insight on how exactly to achieve the most ROI.

We have one last announcement before you head out today. VoIP Innovations, a wholesale VoIP service provider, will be traveling to Miami next week to attend the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo (ITEXPO). We’ve been hearing about what they have up their sleeve for this and it seems like they’re going to WOW the crowd! If you have plans to attend the show, make sure you stop by Booth 606 and ask about their Industry leading BackOffice platform, Titanium III. You can’t miss them; they’ll be the guys in the orange ties!

That’s all that we have for you today! Bundle up and enjoy your weekend. 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

Welcome back to our weekly Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! We have a few very exciting things to share with all of you today since we’ve had a pretty fantastic week. The first piece of news that needs to be shared is the donation we made to the Make-A-Wish Foundation this week. Every year we do various volunteering and fundraising events. All of the money we raise is matched by ABG Capital and then Donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation so we can grant a child’s wish. This year though, was a little different. We ramped up our fundraising efforts and with the generous matching contribution from ABG Capital, we were able to grant two wishes this year! Giving back is such a huge part of our mission and values and we’re just ecstatic that we’ll be helping out two fantastic children who deserve to have their wishes granted. Here are a few pictures from the donation event:

ABG Capital at Make-A-Wish ABG Capital at Make-A-Wish  ABG Capital at Make-A-Wish

We also want to mention that Kimmie Rivetti, the new employee we mentioned last week, is finishing up her very first week with us. Kimmie is working as our newest Billing Representative and we’re happy to have her as part of our team!

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Kimmie in her ugly sweater for our ugly sweater party!

Since it’s right around the holidays, we decided to have a Pot Luck Lunch today along with an Ugly Sweater Contest! We also announced the winner of the Holiday Basket of Cheer today, which was Nick Jenkner. He wasn’t in the office today, but we couldn’t wait and had to call him to share the good news!

Last week we had our Annual Holiday Party and it’s safe to say that everyone had a fantastic time! There was great food, music, dancing and even some holiday trivia games! We announced our Annual Sports Awards and the recipient of our Gerard F. Tapolci Award. Randy Stegner has been with us since 2009 and since then he’s shown tremendous passion and dedication for the organization. Choosing him as the recipient of the Gerard F. Tapolci was a clear choice. Congratulations Randy and keep up the fantastic work! As for the Sports Awards recipients, each of these individuals let their talents loose and they shined throughout the games. Below is the list of awards and winners:

Bowling

·         King Pin – Nick Jenkner

·         Gutterball Guru – Sally Stewart

·         The Striker Award – Jason Marshall

Kickball

·         Golden Foot Award – Ari Sigalov

·         Take Your Ball and Go Home Award – Ron Eggert

·         Keeping the Peace Award – Lowell Smith

Softball

·         MVP – Natalie DeCario

·         The Slash Award (Cheerleaders/Scorekeeper/Photographer/Umpire) – Erica Penrod and Sara Warhold

·         Best Fence Jumper – Dave Smith

Football

·         MVP – Cameron Nutter

·         Best QB – Jeff Linkowski

·         Biggest Heart Award – Tyler Weimerskirch

·         Brian Barnabei Hands of Stone Award – Brian Barnabei, since no one else could compete with his hands of stone.

Here are some other pictures from our Holiday Party:

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Just another Friday at ABG

Happy Friday everyone! We know that today is Friday the 13th, but we’ve had a great week so we’re not worried about the “bad luck” that usually surrounds this day. As you remember from our post last week, we ranked No. 6 on the 2013 Best Places to Work in PA list! This was such a huge accomplishment and we’re proud to share the news again! We were in the small to medium employers who have 25 to 249 employees. Last year we ranked No. 14 and it’s such an impressive increase for our entire organization! Here’s a message that our Management Team sent out to all the employees:

“Thank you for your individual time, passion, energy, and dedication in assisting with this effort!  We are very proud and honored to have a culture of success and this award is a direct reflection of your hard work, commitment and overall engagement with in our company.”

Again, congratulations to everyone at ABG Capital who helped to create the fantastic culture that we’ve come to love!

We have another great announcement to make today that involves a new hire! Kimberly (Kimmie) Rivetti will be the newest member of our ABG Capital family and will be joining our team as a Billing Representative. Kimmie is joining us from Sincerely Yogurt where she handled all accounting activity in her role as Office Manager for the organization. Her prior experience stems from Four Points Sheraton Pittsburgh Airport where she managed the overall billing functions on all accounts. Kimmie earned her Associates in Specialized Business Degree in Hospitality Management Administration from Boyd School, a division of PTI, in October of 2001. We’re looking forward to welcoming her to the office on Monday, December 16!

We have just a few more Holiday themed announcements to make and that’s it. We’re half way into December and that means that time is almost up for you to buy raffle tickets to our Giant Holiday Basket Giveaway! Remember that tickets are $1 and all of the proceeds will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  We’ll pull the winning name on Friday, December 20. If you’re interested in buying tickets, please send an email to natalied@abgcapital.com. If you are not local and would still like to support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, visit their website and you can easily donate from there.

The night is finally for our Annual ABG Capital Holiday Party! This party has been going on for years now and it’s always a great time. Everyone gets to hang out and enjoy the music, award announcements and overall fantastic atmosphere of the night.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been running a contest to name some signature cocktails for the night. There were tons of great submissions, but here are the winners:

  • Barry’s “Flaming Stache” in 1st Place
  • Erica’s “Erica’s Evil Elf” in 2nd Place
  • 3rd Place was a tie between the following people who will be entered into a drawing to receive the last prize!
    • Jed’s “adbase1234”
    • Paul’s “The GlobalPOP”
    • Jessica’s “3Amigarita”

Last but not least, here are a few pictures of the Christmas decorations we put up in the office.

ABG Capital Christmas Decorations

Sara decorating the tree!

ABG Capital Christmas Decorations

 

ABG Capital Christmas Decorations

The VoIP Innovations VI Guy was even helping out!

ABG Capital Christmas Decorations

Sara and Sharon working on the tree!