Today is International Women’s Day, a day to empower women and celebrate their many achievements across the world. In honour of such a great day, the women of the 22 Group office were asked who their inspirational woman is and why! Here are the responses...

Laura - "I could really say any of the women in my family; I’ve been surrounded by strong and outspoken women my entire life. Celebrity-wise, I love Luisa Zissman. She’s the perfect balance of brains and beauty and is a big believer in work hard, play hard!"

Amber - "Hillary Clinton. She's a natural born leader and has the balls and resilience to survive at the very top. Unlike some who make it, she hasn't neglected fighting for the issues that women less fortunate face worldwide. She's made a huge impact on adoption/fostering rights and child safety in the US. She balances her social democratic views with a strong academic and pragmatic approach which I think is a valuable quality for a potential leader of for a global superpower such as the US. I also appreciate Emmeline Pankhurst, as she did die under a horse, sacrificing her life and her liberty to ensure we got the vote and have many of the freedoms we take for granted today."

Ashton - "Above all my mum. If I turn out to be half the strong, caring, selfless women she is I will be very grateful. Another woman who stands out to me is Kate Winslet, not only is she an oscar-winning actress but she uses her high status to speak out and encourage women to believe in themselves. Kate refuses to let the media dictate how women should look or act."

Louise - ""

We would have asked the guys who their inspirational women are, but of course, we already know that's us!

You’ve probably heard of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg… They’re not on our dev team just yet but the talent we’ve got is pretty close. There are several benefits of working with 22 Group and having a dev team on hand is certainly one of them! Here’s just 5 reasons having the 22 Dev team on board will ensure your project is a success!

• Always available in a crisis

When your website goes down, or you get hit with an ‘error 404’ it can impact your whole business - if you use your website for generating sales, that can result in a real income loss! However with 22 you will always have full maintenance support. You just get on the phone to your Account Manager who will work with the dev experts and the problem is fixed in the shortest possible time. You know the issue will be identified, fixed and precautions will be implemented to stop the same errors repeating. Your website is in safe hands.

• Next level talent

I’m sure every office has someone who is pretty handy with a computer. However the level of talent no where near compares to that of a dev team. Programmers are fluent in coding and technology and you can almost guarantee that any issue that arises is something they have already faced before.

• Saves you money

You would think that working with an external dev team would cost you a small fortune, however it is actually cheaper than hiring internally or getting a technology company to fix any issues as a one off. This is because we allow flexibility with our retainers so the likelihood is you wouldn’t be charged any extra. If you don’t have a marketing retainer with us, but we built your website our dev team would still be on hand to help with any technical issues and provide support.

• Best technology

Something else to save you money… You don’t need to invest in the most current and expensive software and technology because we already have it. You can also be sure our guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to the best technology to use.

• Level of trust

When it comes to your website, security is pretty important. By working with the same dev team consistently you can build up a level of trust. You know who has access to your website and you can trust that the correct security procedures will be followed.

At 22 Group we realise the importance of a motivated workforce. From placement students to senior website developers, each and every employee should feel like they are part of the team. A motivated workforce has several benefits to a company…here’s just 5 of them listed below:

Return on investment -

Invest in your people and they will invest in you! If you’re spending company money on training and developing your workforce you should be seeing some return on investment - with your staff more able to take on new skills and responsibilities. This helps you keep more work managed in-house and saves expensive outsourcing costs! If employees are motivated at work and feel you’re investing in their long term development, the return will be higher and it is likely the employee will continue to work for the company, rather than look to go elsewhere, leading to what every company aspires to - a low staff turnover.

Reduced absenteeism -

This one is quite obvious… If you are unmotivated at work, you are less likely to want to go in and not as likely to contribute to great ideas when you get there. By keeping your team as motivated as possible, levels of absenteeism should vastly reduce.

Increased productivity -

Motivated staff are productive staff. Not only is the quality of work provided likely to be better, the amount of work produced should be higher. Also a well valued, healthy workforce will be more positive, more engaged and bring more to the team!

Promoting an open and honest culture -

Many companies will send round a yearly questionnaire on job satisfaction but how accurate do you think the results are? The best way to promote an open and honest culture is by keeping your workforce motivated by encouraging them to speak out about any concerns, be able to put their ideas forward and know their opinions are valued.

Reputation and recruitment -

Finally, reputation is everything. If your workforce is happy and motivated performing at the highest caliber, the type of new employees you will attract are likely to be of better quality. A company with good perks and a good reputation is a company that people will want to work at. When your staff are out and about with their friends who are living for the weekend you want them talking about how motivated they feel on a Monday morning!

We are ambitious and always looking towards innovation to drive our business forward and provide a quality service. As the business expands, 22 Group are growing their team of dedicated and skilled staff, scouring the local talent.

We are strong believers that in order to grow, you have to look to the future. Having worked with numerous property companies such asEweMove.com and Knight Frank, we saw the opportunity to use the experience and the technology we had developed to expand our business.

The "traditional" image of an estate agency is being well and truly diluted, following a change in customer needs during the last downturn in the economy.

It was this issue and demand from estate agents in their varied forms and structures, which led to the design of PropertyStream. Created in consultation with some of the country’s leading estate agencies, PropertyStream is flexible enough to be adapted to individual agencies’ needs and structures.

PropertyStream has all the features estate agents need to run a modern estate agency. And helps set them apart with award winning creative website design and marketing.

Launched in March 2014 following a targeted multifaceted marketing campaign, there has already been an overwhelmingly positive response.

One problem we noticed from our initial market research was that no one is listening to Estate Agents nothing services them completely.

To ensure we’re always pushing ourselves we have invested in a continual market research campaign talking to agents across the country about their problems and what we can do to fix them.