Quick Facts

The Challenges

By early 2007, Universal Events was feeling the strain of I.T. limitations. The company had experienced 3 years of extremely rapid growth in all the key numbers (revenue, staff, number of transactions, number of events), but in the process it had outgrown its existing I.T. systems - it was time for a rethink.

CRM was first on the agenda: the existing CRM software, hosted externally in a US datacentre, had proven too slow and unreliable to support the business as it continued to grow. After an extensive evaluation, SugarCRM Professional was selected as the ideal platform for both staff access to customer data, and to integrate the business processes around customer enrolments in seminars.

The planned software integration project highlighted another looming requirement: an upgrade to reliable and professional hosting for servers & databases.

Meanwhile, as the company hired more field-based staff to run an ever-larger number of events, it became increasingly difficult to provide them with reliable I.T. systems. The existing Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution for remote access proved too slow, unreliable and limited in functionality for the highly mobile events team. These challenges limited effective collaboration between the office team and events team, affecting productivity as staff resorted to using GMail accounts to move files between locations.

The company's decision to open a second office in London provided the final impetus for change: it clearly needed a cost-effective way to provide I.T. services to a small satellite office on the other side of the world.

The new office further highlighted the need for a system to enable the highly dispersed team work productively and collaborate effectively. Fortunately the I.T. on Tap service was identified as the perfect solution to the company's various I.T. challenges.

The Results

After a few weeks of careful planning, Universal Events cut over to the I.T. on Tap platform one weekend in July, 2007. The changeover went smoothly, and staff quickly adjusted to the only visible change: launching their software applications from a web page instead of from their desktop.

The company opted to migrate onto the I.T. on Tap service before it was ready to change over to SugarCRM, based on a philosophy that it's better to make no more than 1 change at once. This provided the staff with ample time to get used to the new system using all their existing, familiar software programs - no retraining was needed.

Benefits began appearing immediately:

• Field staff could work more productively, with fast, reliable access to email and files available from any corner of the world with broadband Internet access.

• The Sydney office became a more pleasant working environment, once the hot, noisy rack of servers was turned off and removed.

• The office team happily gave up their mundane I.T. admin tasks (managing backups, changing tapes, tracking licences for compliance, renewing annual support contracts) and bid a permanent farewell to their local PC consultant.

• A private Wiki for Universal Events staff was introduced as a collaboration tool. The company began migrating hardcopy operational manuals into the Wiki to make them more easily accessible, searchable and more up-to-date.

• Improved hosting capabilities accelerated the development of the company's proprietary event management software and its integration with SugarCRM.

• Requests for technical support fell across the board, but particularly from field staff, as the I.T. on Tap service proved to be both eaiser to use and more reliable than the old systems.

• Office staff found that they were able to work from home equally as well as they could in the office - and without any need for complex setup work. With the company's business spanning more time zones, the flexibility to work from home at times helps compensate for the varied working hours that some staff now experience.