Overview

Athol Strachan is the owner of a number of businesses in Aberdeen. With a history of success in the motor trade industry, he purchased Aberdeen Autospray in 2014. Aberdeen Autospray was established in 1975, providing vehicle repair, modification and maintenance services.

Mother Technologies had an existing relationship with Athol, having previously delivered hosted IT services to his Land Rover and Porsche dealerships.

Challenges

• Aberdeen Autospray was an aged business in need of a full office and IT & Communications system refurbishment
• Athol required an ICT solution that would allow him to operate the business as usual without use of a physical office in the short-term

Solution

Mother Technologies hosted a full IT and telecom suite, laid an Ethernet connection to the office building, supplied and installed all new hardware on a mix of purchased or Infrastructure as a Service basis for the refurbished office.

Delivery

Contract Award Date: February 2014

Project Completion Date: October 2014

• All number routing and call porting were configured to allow seamless call handling without disruption to the business
• A hosted IT and telecom suite was immediately set up in Mother’s Aberdeen data centre and accessed via a standard internet connection
• A 100Mb Ethernet connection was laid between the office and Mother’s local data centre
• A suite of hardware including routers, handsets, desktops and thin clients was provided and installed in the new office on both a purchase and Infrastructure as a Service as best suited Aberdeen Autospray’s needs
• Provision of all desktop applications on a Software as a Service basis, including Office, Exchange, antivirus, antispam and all applications specific to the business
• Ongoing 24 hour proactive network monitoring and support are provided

Results

• Aberdeen Autospray were able to operate business as usual throughout the period of office refurbishment due to the hosted, off-premise IT and telecom solution that had been commissioned
• No staff time is required to maintain the ICT system and staff only access the desktop applications they need
• They now benefit from a fixed cost, low cost ICT system that is completely scalable
• Aberdeen Autospray’s IT and telephony systems are seamlessly accessible from any location, which is particularly useful for Athol who is often physically based in his other businesses or his home office

“Right now we’re expanding the company and the ground work has already been done with cloud integration. It’s so easy for us to simply plug into the cloud wherever we need to. That’s happening for real at a new workshop in Aberdeen in next month or two. It also means that if we open more workshops in other Scottish cities, the IT and phone systems are already there and ready to connect to. It gives us a huge amount of flexibility and means that IT technicalities no longer need to be a major consideration or hold up. Going hosted was a great decision that has paid off – and we know we can rely on the service we receive from Mother.”

Athol Strachan, Managing Director, Aberdeen Autospray

Case Study