Being more productive and saving money on IT is crucial in a tight economic climate. After upgrading to 24×7 support and rolling out a disaster recovery plan with the help of CodeBlue, the Auckland Business Chamber has radically improved its IT support and security.

The Auckland Business Chamber had been relying on a single contractor to provide its IT support. “I wouldn’t describe it as best practice,” says Daniel Manford, the Auckland Business Chamber’s ICT manager.

“As we grew our organisation we felt we could get better value for money, drive productivity and get more out of our IT spend.”

Today the Chamber is reaping the rewards of its ongoing investment in technology with the support of infrastructure services provider CodeBlue.

“ The company needed to be affordable as well as reliable – and CodeBlue ticked all our boxes.”

Since CodeBlue came on board as a strategic IT partner, it has undertaken a review of the Chamber’s infrastructure, put into action a
comprehensive plan to improve overall network performance, implemented a new server environment and applied best practice across its network.

New servers were installed in. The Chamber subsequently rolled out CodeBlue’s disaster recovery plan and data backup service. They also implemented a state of the art secure content management system from Trend Micro. As a result, the Chamber is reaping a number of business benefits, the most significant being increased productivity as well as other savings.

“It also means less downtime and 24×7 support that’s more strategic and less reactive,” says Manford.

Protecting its heritage

With a 150-year history, the Auckland Business Chamber is one of New Zealand’s most respected business organisations. It has around 6000 members in the greater Auckland area and provides a platform to help them to succeed. Organisations join to grow their business through networking and promotional opportunities, to mitigate risk by becoming better informed about compliance, find and develop skills and to save money.

The Chamber sought a specialist IT organisation that embraces best practice and provides 24×7 support. CodeBlue was recommended
by other strategic partners.

“The company needed to be affordable as well as reliable,” says Manford, “and CodeBlue ticked all our boxes.”

Chamber staff travelling overseas require remote access to email and mission critical data; often in difficult and challenging environments. Its mobile sales force needs remote systems access to meet a target of contacting around 200 potential new members each month.

Prior to engaging CodeBlue, the Chamber lost productivity and revenue through systems downtime. “I’d been under pressure to keep things up and running,” says Manford. “But it was more reactive than strategic. Those problems went away when CodeBlue arrived on the scene. I can sleep better at night knowing there are people I can call 24×7 to solve my problems.”

“You expect things to go wrong but, when they do, we know we have someone who’s calm under pressure and who can work through a process to get it fixed as soon as possible and to stop similar things occurring in the future,” says Manford. “When members ask me about IT systems I tell them about CodeBlue.”

Mission critical data access

A further threat to the Chamber was its lack of a disaster recovery plan; it was at risk of losing vital data. “The whole team needs to be working off the same version of our database of Chamber members,” says Manford. “Our database is mission critical – it’s the beating heart of our organisation.”

CodeBlue consulted the Chamber, talked through the risks and recommended an implementation strategy. Today Manford has someone he can rely on for support.

“You expect things to go wrong but, when they do, we know we have someone who’s calm under pressure and who can work through a process to get it fixed as soon as possible and to stop similar things occurring in the future,” says Manford. “When members ask me about IT systems I tell them about CodeBlue.”

CodeBlue has also helped the Chamber install an IT training room, providing IT training facilities for staff and members.

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