Gaining competitive advantage with leading-edge IT

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"Busy Bees has really benefited from Quiss' innovative and flexible approach to service provisioning. Their low staff turnover, their understanding of our business and its objectives has significantly contributed towards our continued success in being able to support the business" - Paul Creaser, IT Manager at Busy Bees.

Profile

Busy Bees is the UK's largest childcare provider. The company started in 1983 with the opening of The Rocklands nursery in Lichfield, Staffordshire and today offers 11,500 places to children in 132 settings across the country. The name has become synonymous with quality childcare and through adoption of a child-centered approach, Busy Bees provides exciting, innovative care for children in an environment that offers plentiful opportunity for play, interaction and development.

Issue

Growing at a rapid rate during the last two decades led to a strategic re-think of the company's IT infrastructure in 1992. Not only did Busy Bees need to outsource its hardware maintenance but it was evident that with continued expansion, the childcare provider would require more flexible and innovative IT solutions which would allow them to continue as market-leaders without compromising the core business ethos.

Solved

For almost 20 years, Quiss has advised, supported, maintained and improved the IT provision at Busy Bees, adopting a flexible approach to consultancy which has evolved over time to meet the ever-changing needs of the company as it developed into the market-leading nursery company it is today. During that time, Quiss managed multiple office moves, network replacements and ensured adequate provision of hosting services to ensure the continued growth and success for the nursery care group.

Today Quiss provides full IT support including hardware maintenance, disaster recovery, business continuity and "third line" technical support for the Head Office infrastructure, and hardware maintenance including installation of touch-screen PCs, interactive whiteboards and SMART tables to the company's nurseries throughout the UK. Maximising business benefits with minimum impact, Quiss recommended a virtualised IT environment to provide a resilient foundation for a dynamic and environmentally friendly infrastructure which would help maintain Busy Bees' position in the market place. Shifting the functionality of many servers to just a few means Busy Bees now has greater control of the IT environment with the added advantage of improved cost management through reduced hardware maintenance and support. Additional support is offered through the recommended implementation of a Storage Area Network (SAN) which will further improve Quiss' disaster recovery and business continuity offering which it currently provides for the company.

Quiss is committed to continually providing innovative and effective IT solutions, focusing on improving Busy Bees' business efficiencies. Recent recommendations include the installation of Microsoft Lync - a the latest Microsoft solution providing a unified communications system to transform business communications with colleagues and clients operating out of diverse geographical locations both within the UK and to the parent company sites in the USA and Singapore, without long distance charges. Utilising Microsoft Lync to provide audio and video conference calling will reduce travel costs, improve staff productivity and offer real-time collaboration.

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