Case Study
St Leonards Motors
Motor Industry
Client Profile
SLM Group are a family-owned business employing just under three hundred people and are a highly successful motor dealership, with 12 sites across East Anglia, Sussex and Kent including franchises with Toyota, Lexus, Nissan, Fiat and Vauxhall, two body shops and Sussex Used Cars.
The Challenge
SLM’s board recognised that the existing technology infrastructure was slow, unreliable, and full of bottlenecks, along with being supported by a small internal IT team which brought its own limitations. They wanted to invest in a streamlined, efficient, company-wide system tailored to their present and future IT needs as the company continued to grow.
The motor group had acquired 12 dealerships over the years, spread across England, each with a completely different IT setup forming a disconnected, outdated, and muddled network while causing headaches for the staff.
The Solution
This led to the group engaging with Astec to architect and deliver a huge digital transformation project that would address:
- Physical Infrastructure
- Hardware
- Networking Infrastructure
- Backup & Disaster Recovery
- Security
- Internet Connectivity
The Astec team orchestrated and delivered the project across the span of 9 months, in amongst a global pandemic, yet keeping regular communication and updates flowing with SLM throughout.
Every server and workstation were replaced, along with cabling across all sites brought up to standard, fully certified and documented.
To address backup & disaster recovery along with security, Microsoft 365 was introduced. Files and mailboxes were migrated onto the platform, with Astec developing a customised SharePoint intranet to store files securely on the cloud and easily manage staff access. Finally, Enterprise Mobility and Security was deployed to all the devices on the network to ensure data and accounts are protected.
Throughout the overhaul of the environment, SLM’s staff were supported by Astec’s fully managed support, providing a fast and efficient helpdesk service through the transition period and beyond, ensuring that the technology continues to deliver the same level of performance benefits long after the initial deployment.
The Outcome
TBC
The Project in Numbers
- 500,000 files migrated securely in the cloud
- 3,000 mailboxes rationalised & migrated
- 300 new workstations set-up and deployed
- 12 new servers installed and commissioned
- 1 universal print solution
- 1 bespoke SharePoint intranet
- 1 harmonised IT network