Description
Lawers Estate Company Ltd. is a Private Property Management Company, operating with a mix of head office and remote workers.
Their IT environment consisted of a blend of desktop and server technology with unstructured file stores, open/public Instant Messaging, a basic POP3/SMTP email service and an externally maintained website (updated at a cost). IT support and planning was an internally adopted role which meant limited capacity alongside the jobs individuals were meant to fulfil.
Requirements
To introduce a more integrated IT service that would allow business capacity scaling, resilience and increased flexibility within a set of acceptable service levels and professional support.
Project Description
The client conducted an initial ‘Business Process and Systems Audit’ from which a formal Business Technology Roadmap was produced providing a statement of requirements, articulating business objectives and expectations including costing and deployment planning. The first phase addressed the imperative business continuity needs with the migration to Microsoft BPOS®. This phase also delivered:
Desktop consolidation onto Windows 7
MS Live Mesh – mobile user data protection
MS Live Meeting – online interactive meetings
MS Live Small Business – website and management interface
MS Security Essentials
Enablement of Mobile devices using – WinMobile and iPhone
A second phase is planned to consolidate standalone and offline business processes into hosted MS SharePoint Portal applications.
Benefits
The business gained a sizable and positive change in user experience, and confidence in its IT platform. The move to BPOS delivered reliability, flexibility and consistency that reflects positively on the professionalism of the organisation as a whole and enhanced the focus on delivery of service to clients.
The biggest impact has been on cost and budgeting. The business now has visibility of its IT spend for the year and the move from a capital model to a working account model has had the effect of reducing the cost of IT to the business whilst delivering greater value.
‘With our new technology in place our energies are more focused on servicing our clients and returning value to our bottom line.
Our business IT tangibly feels more professional, operationally more fluid and feature rich with a reliability that we are all but forgetting the silent pains that we used to endure.
Whilst it was a questionable move to a predominantly hosted model the fact that we have had to focus less on managing and frustrating about IT speaks volumes for the benefits we are realising.’
Managing Director – Lawers Estate Co. Ltd.
