by Lisa Banks

Chelgrave saves $100,000 thanks to BPOS deployment

News
Mar 10, 2011
Cloud ComputingE-commerce ServicesFinance and Accounting Systems

Labour hire company, Chelgrave Contracting, has saved an estimated $100,000 in fuel and business costs after deploying Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS).

See Google Apps vs Microsoft BPOS, Office 365.

The move to BPOS has resulted in the installation of a properly integrated intranet, which has replaced manual paper-based systems, and allowed greater connectivity between its four offices and 400 remote staff members.

General manager, Greg Scott, said the move was much needed for the company.

“Part of our requirements was the need to build an intranet as an in-house solution,” he said. “We had SharePoint and Outlook on our server, so we firstly needed build on this and get some electronic documentation.”

Without an internal IT team to run the installation, the company sought the help of Microsoft and third parties for more technical know-how.

“We don’t have an IT team,” Scott said. “I have had exposure to hosted solutions, and when I came into the company, I found a traditional business that had a lot of basic systems with a lot of documentation that was paper-based.”

Scott also made a move to the Cloud as part of the transition.

“SharePoint is hosted, as well as Outlook and Microsoft Exchange,” he said. “… All of that technology is now Cloud-based, and that allows me to use my laptop and work from anywhere.”

The move has had a great impact on savings for the business, with some 40 per cent more revenue than at the same time last year being generated for the company, according to Scott.

“We’ve actually made last year’s revenue in seven months,” he said. “The technology has enabled that.”

Scott would not elaborate on ROI specifics, but said the new setup is providing continuing savings.

“The ironic thing is that it’s cheaper than what we had in place,” he said. “Our mobile phone plan is bundled… and we were wondering why we hadn’t done it earlier.”

The migration to BPOS was a relatively quick one for Scott, who said once the planning was finished, the implementation was completed overnight.

“Once we got the passwords and all of that information set up with the MOS product, most people didn’t realise there was anything that was different,” he said.

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