Thanks to the efforts of Loseley Park, their managing agents and the nice people at Fibre Options, Pro Drive have recently been upgraded to a new high speed fibre internet service. We are lucky that there was a locally sponsored initiative which should make a huge difference to the residents and businesses on the Loseley estate.
So now we have the speed we have started to think about how we can use it to benefit our business. Here are the four initiatives we have come up with:
Automated backup and disaster recovery (BDR)
We have been advocating the need for automated BDR systems to our clients for many years – and they have sensibly been adopting them. We always try to ‘practice what we preach’ and so having to rely on outdated tape/usb drive systems ourselves made us very nervous – even if our critical systems are all in the cloud.
We will now be moving very quickly to an automated BDR system for our remaining office based IT systems which will mean we can all sleep that bit easier at night.
Hosted telephony and communications
As with many businesses Pro Drive have an office phone system running over ISDN lines which has served us faithfully over the last few years.
We will now be moving to a hosted phone system so our staff are contactable on their office extension wherever they are through a desk phone, mobile phone or a ‘soft phone’ on their PC.
This allows far more flexible working patterns, help us keep in touch better with our customers and ensure no disruption in service in the event we cannot reach the office. We can also benefit from very low cost calls saving the company money.
Better use of cloud applications
Pro Drive have long since moved the systems required to service our clients to the cloud to ensure continuity of service. We now intend to move other office systems into a hosted environment – this arrangement ensure the experience for our staff is consistent wherever they are working and removes the need to replace servers in the future.
Webinars and video conferencing
We intend to increase our use of video calls, on line presentations and webinars to bring us closer to customers, partners and suppliers. These are no substitute for face to face meetings but give a more involving experience than a phone call. With our business network becoming increasingly global this helps us build the close relationships we always seek.
If you have access to high speed internet, even if it does come at a cost, you should carry out a return on investment calculation against the business benefits. It may well pay for itself or better. Call us on 0330 124 3599 if you need help.
