The enjoyable part of providing IT support is the knowledge gained from working with different industries. One of our recent projects was for a construction company. The company had an existing relationship with an alternate IT supplier but wished to move to a new supplier due to issues.
The most common reasons a business will look for an alternate IT supplier are poor customer service, ticket response delays, and increased costs. We were happy to prove to this Client that we could provide better service.
Client Requirement
The Client has three sites. Accounting staff were at one site, another office was a satellite office for engineers, and a third site was at their Clients’ development. The problems they were facing were:
Data sharing was needed between all sites.
Engineers needed to use their mobile phones but show the office landline.
The development site needed internet.
Staff wanted their work emails on their personal phones.
The laptops used by staff were old and slow.
The Client was using AOL emails but wanted domain emails.
The above list of issues was familiar to us, as new Clients have presented similar problems before. It is often about more than spending money; it is about implementing the most cost-effective and efficient solutions.
Our Solution
So, where do we start? On this occasion the handover from the outgoing IT company was not particularly useful, so we followed our own onboarding procedures, starting with emails. The Client was using an AOL “catch-all” email address that looked unprofessional. We set up Microsoft Exchange emails attached to their company domain as they owned their domain. Once email licencing (Microsoft 365) was established, SharePoint became available. We could then set up Microsoft SharePoint sites for each department and transfer data from their company Dropbox. After implanting hierarchical access permissions, secure access was allocated to each staff member.
Next, we examined the laptop and PC hardware and found that a couple of the machines were over four years old. We supplied our business-specified laptops and enrolled these and the existing computers in our monitoring system. After installing Webroot anti-virus and encrypting the drives, we added SharePoint access.
Next, we tackled the internet and phone issues. First, we advised the Client that staff could NOT have work emails on their personal phones due to possible GDPR breaches. The solution was to provide relatively basic smartphones (to keep the costs low) for this purpose. Engineers frequently needed to call their Clients, and did not want their personal mobile numbers to show. Working with our leading telecoms supplier, ONSIM, we provided new SIM cards showing the company office number on outgoing calls.
Finally, as the development site was a building site, fibre cabling was not yet installed. However, staff needed a working site office. We provided a 5G data solution, with a speed of around 90MBPS. This temporary solution could easily be transitioned to the next site if needed.
The process took 3 days, after which the Client was fully operational, sharing data securely and using professional domain email addresses.
QLine IT Costs
Surprisingly, this project’s setup costs were relatively low, with low ongoing costs.
Laptop(s) – £600 each
SIM card(s) – £12.00 per month
Exchange Standard Emails – £13.00 per month
5G Data sim – £22.00 per month
Teltonika Router – £320.00
Smart Phones (basis) – £160.00 each
IT Summary
This project confirms that fundamental principles will ensure efficient IT no matter what industry a Client comes from.
Quality hardware, domain emails, GDPR compliance, efficient telecoms and internet, etc. Often, it takes little financial outlay for a Client to appear professional.
Using Exchange email rather than a free service such as AOL or Hotmail, having a landline number rather than a mobile. Using a company such as QLine IT utilises our accumulative experience to improve your company’s IT infrastructure.
