Asbestos specialists Acorn Analytical Services (UK) Ltd found that relocation from managed office space in Northampton to its own unit on the same industrial estate identified a need for superfast connectivity that met its increasing need for digital connections to the outside world.
Acorn is a fully independent, specialist asbestos consultancy, providing compliance services to clients right across the UK. It has a strong customer-focused ethos and offers comprehensive support, ensuring that any risks to the client organisation and its staff and customers, are correctly managed, repaired or removed. Acorn’s team of experts also works with clients to train their staff and thus empower them to understand and apply best processes and systems for safe asbestos control.
Like many businesses, Acorn was becoming increasingly dependent on digital connections to maintain its stringent service levels, and looked to ACS to ensure it had the infrastructure a modern company needs.
Sian Stone, Commercial Manager at Acorn, said:
“The previous location was a shared building, and the management company provided all the utilities, including the broadband, which I think had a maximum speed of around 30Mbps, and we used to have issues with it cutting out all the time.”
This was a real problem for Acorn, and it was going to become even more crucial. Although it was not the case at the time of the move, Acorn was already planning to migrate all its IT applications and services to the cloud. Doing that would make the business entirely reliant on its internet connection. With around 30 staff dealing with a constant flow of enquiries and well as ongoing projects, it could not afford to take any chances with connectivity services in the new building.
The Solution
Even prior to the cloud migration, the inconsistency of the broadband service was a real problem for Acorn, as Sian explained:
“There are about 14 of us who are normally in the office day to day and we need reliability, and we need speed. We had outgrown that building anyway, and in the new premises we wanted a leased line to make sure we had that guaranteed speed and reliability.”
ACS is a Northampton-based communications and IT specialist and a CityFibre Champion partner. It had done some IT work in the past for Acorn and the businesses had a good ongoing relationship. When the time came to look at options for the new building, Acorn contacted ACS for advice.
While Acorn did look at alternatives, they felt the CityFibre 100Mbps leased line option that ACS proposed would be the best option for its immediate and mid-term needs. ACS also assured Acorn that, should the business need to upgrade its connectivity at some point, that would be quite easy and there would also be more than enough extra capacity available.
With the business growing fast, that could be a distinct possibility – and it should certainly be easy enough. Northampton is one of CityFibre’s designated Gigabit Cities, which means that the supplier has invested millions in putting its own fibre infrastructure into the ground all around the town.
But for now, the 100Mbps leased line would provide Acorn with the dedicated bandwidth that it needed – both downstream and upstream – to support cloud-based services and ensure users got the consistent responsiveness they need to work efficiently and productively.
For a company that prides itself on delivering excellent customer service, this was really important.
In addition, as well as providing the bandwidth that Acorn needed, the CityFibre 100Mbps leased line was also attractively priced compared to other options.
The Results
The CityFibre line has been a huge improvement for Acorn. As well as providing more than adequate speeds, it has been completely reliable, and that’s vital for Acorn.
Sian Stone said:
“It’s been three years now since we had the line installed and we have had no issues. I think it cut out once but that was due to a power issue on the estate, and even that was rectified in about an hour. Otherwise, there have been no problems and that is important because previously, when the internet cut out our business was on hold. As we are working on cloud-based systems we need it to be running all the time, otherwise we just can’t operate.”
Acorn has been delighted with the CityFibre connection and the service that both CityFibre and ACS have provided – and recently moved its managed services to ACS. This means that ACS’s experts are now keeping a watchful eye on all of Acorn’s IT systems, as well as its connectivity.
The Acorn Analytical Services (UK) Ltd business is still growing and knowing that it has a connection and a managed services provider it can rely on, is important. It means the company’s team can focus on meeting the needs of its customers and making sure that growth continues.
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