Business supportResults
Real work, measured in business outcomes
A selection of projects from our team’s experience, described in terms of what they meant for the business. Client names are withheld, but every project and figure is real.
Cost · Process · Integration
Cutting $2 million a year from an internet provider’s costs
The situation
A fast-growing internet provider was winning business customers quickly, but every new customer added work to a back office that ran on spreadsheets, manual set-up and paperwork. A new mobile data service was about to add even more.
What it was costing the business
Every new customer meant more manual work and more hand-offs where mistakes could creep in. Meanwhile one of its largest overheads, radio spectrum licensing, was priced on calculations that could be done far more precisely.
What we did
- Took the manual steps out of the customer journey, from order to monthly bill
- Replaced spreadsheets and paperwork with one system that set up customers, produced their documents and billed them
- Connected it to the CRM, Google and the SIM supplier, so information was entered once
- Recalculated licensing needs from over 50 technical factors, so the business paid only for what it used
The business result
$2M+ a yearless spent on licensing
No manual set-upfor new customers’ equipment
Scan and postthe only manual step left in the mobile service
One systemfor contracts, stock, faults and reporting
Business continuity
Keeping a customer-facing service running through an outage
The situation
A business delivers its service to customers through an online platform that has to be available around the clock. It already had equipment in two locations, but if the main site lost power, its internet connection or a server, the service went down until someone fixed it.
What it was costing the business
An outage left customers unable to use the service until someone recovered it by hand. The usual fixes, enterprise equipment or moving to a large cloud provider, would have cost many times its existing budget.
What we did
- Set clear targets for how long the service could be down, and how much data it could afford to lose
- Designed a fallback around the two sites and internet connections it already paid for
- Made the switch-over automatic, so nobody has to be on call to start it
- Proved it by moving the live service between sites in both directions
The business result
~4 minutesto recover from losing a whole site, with nobody touching it
≤5 minutesof work at risk in the worst case
$0in software licence fees
No new sitesor enterprise equipment needed
Business continuity · Risk
Protecting a lab’s core records before its server failed
The situation
A specialist chemistry company quotes, tests and certifies its products using an in-house system. Its compound database, quotes, certificates of analysis and lab records all lived on one server installed around 2008, which was also quietly acting as the office file server.
What it was costing the business
If that server failed, the business couldn’t issue quotes or certificates, and years of records could be lost. It couldn’t be updated or properly backed up, and nobody was sure what else depended on it. Replacing it risked the very records it held.
What we did
- Listed every job the old server did, including ones nobody remembered, so nothing would be missed
- Moved the core system onto a supported, backed-up platform on the company’s existing server
- Copied the data without touching the original, so the old system stayed available as a fallback
- Archived anything no longer used rather than deleting it
The business result
No disruptionto quoting, testing or certification during the project
Minutesfor the final switch-over, not a weekend of downtime
Backed upcore records protected properly
No new hardwareneeded
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