Our MD, Rachel Wynne, established Panacea as a management consultancy in 2004. Prior to that, Rachel was working as freelance management consultant and finding work volumes were becoming too large for her to manage on her own. “At the time I was using a desktop software that I’d developed to generate efficiencies and savings for my clients, and I wanted to put this online to better support a growing business. So, the main reason I started Panacea was because I needed to recruit a developer to put the software online,” explains Rachel.
In 2004, very few organisations were using online software, the internet was in its infancy and many were hesitant to use online solutions, so they employed Panacea as consultants. In 2008, Rachel secured investment from the London Development Agency to optimise Panacea Software's user interface, refining its overall design and user experience.
In 2008, the company experienced remarkable growth after transitioning into a Software as a Service (SaaS) Provider. “Following the 2007-8 financial crisis, public sector organisations were desperately seeking cost savings. Clients were able to use the software directly to dramatically cut their costs and eventually we stopped selling the consultancy service, concentrating on SaaS from that point onwards,” Rachel continues. “At this stage, we were travelling to our clients’ offices to discuss annual targets, review progress and train their users. Since Covid our subscriber training, meetings and communication are largely online – although we relish every opportunity to meet our users face-to-face.”
Today, we are fortunate to retain many loyal clients who continue to use Panacea Software to achieve optimum results and provide invaluable savings and efficiencies for their organisations. Our clients are public sector organisations or publicly funded by the government. As a result, our software has been developed specifically to enable compliance with the complex and rigorous regulations that public bodies must adhere to.
“A lot of our workflows involve streamlining and simplifying compliance with those processes, which otherwise require masses of admin, the software does that in the background,” says Rachel. “What we are really proud of is the difference the software has made to these organisations to be able to deliver critical services to the public with ever decreasing resources and budgets.”
Panacea Software provides user-friendly, intelligent solutions to simplify and streamline compliant workflows and complex processes. It is used by many public bodies as their corporate solution for procurement, contract management and purchase-to-pay activities. Our intuitive software is also used for effective project and resource management by specialist teams providing skilled and complex services, including communications, design, print, translation and interpreting, involving reactive and proactive work and involving multiple in-house and external parties. Our software offers intelligent user-friendly modules providing a range of solutions all of which share a unified database. Our clients use Panacea Software to cut 80+% of their administration time and achieve valuable cost savings. Regardless of the package you select, our user-friendly interface enhances workflow’ effectiveness, efficiency and adaptability to change, empowering users to achieve best results.
Panacea moved to Waterloo a decade ago, settling into our current office in September 2020. We love working in this area, with its mix of community, culture and small businesses providing a relaxed and welcoming working environment. Our team work using the hybrid model, which makes the best use of our office space and creates a positive work-life balance for our employees.
“We’re a small business supporting many clients. I’m extremely proud of our superb team, we’re incredibly lucky to attract and retain such high calibre staff. We have exceptionally skilled developers and testers who are technically fantastic and know our software inside and out. Our account management team are openly praised by our subscribers and our support team are multi-award-winning. It’s not just me who thinks they’re brilliant,” continues Rachel.
At Panacea, our clients are at the heart of everything we do. We work closely with each customer to ensure we understand their business and keep abreast of their changing requirements. We actively engage with them, encourage and listen to their suggestions and offer agile and flexible solutions, which we are constantly developing so all our users enjoy up-to-date, innovative and intuitive software.
“Our clients are comfortable talking to us about their plans and priorities, so we can support them in using our software to establish efficient working practices, meet their targets and adapt to their changing needs. They let us know if they think things could be done differently or better on the software and they let us know when things have gone well. We truly work in partnership with our clients and get a lot of positive feedback which is very motivating,” says Rachel.
Our software development is continuous and, with the first phase of new processes required for the Procurement Act 2023 set to go live in October 2024, we are working closely with the Cabinet Office digital team to evolve Panacea Software so our clients can consistently enjoy efficient and user-friendly solutions which adhere to the latest UK Government procurement regulations.
“The future for Panacea is very bright,” continues Rachel. “There's increased recognition and understanding of its value in the market and we’re getting lots of incoming requests for the software. We're one of the few Software as a Service providers in our market that really does provide up to date intuitive and innovative solutions. We're excited about the future for Panacea.”
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