BCC IT partners with Halls estate agents to look after all their IT requirements

When you choose to partner with an external company for them to provide you with services, there is typically a trade-off between cost and quality. An important factor that underlies both of these criteria is trust. Without it, the partnership will never really deliver the benefits you were hoping for, and in all likelihood you will be worse off than if you had never partnered with them in the first place.

Halls was founded in 1845 in the county town of Shrewsbury under the name of Hall, Wateridge and Owen. It is one of the oldest and most respected independent firms of estate agents, chartered surveyors, auctioneers and valuers in the UK. The firm works from 10 offices across Shropshire, Worcestershire, Mid-Wales, the West Midlands and neighbouring counties, employing nearly 100 staff. Their team have an unrivalled knowledge of the local markets and specialist areas of interest, allowing them to offer the very best advice to their clients, no matter what their requirements.

Cisco router problems

A few years back, Halls were having problems with a number of Cisco routers they had recently installed, as Tony Hughes, the company secretary and accountant explained. “We had carried out some changes to our systems and the organisation we used to install these new routers simply could not get them to work. We approached a local firm to see if they could help, but were quoted a very high price that we believed was out of all proportion with the work needed.

“Then, one of our existing partners recommended BCC IT, and their quote was much more realistic. Once their consultants had taken a look at the routers, they quickly realised they were not capable of supporting our requirements and that this was causing the problems. From that point on, we realised that BCC IT were a company we knew we could trust to do a good job for a competitive price. We have never had to look elsewhere since then.”

Comprehensive backup solution

“From hosting our accounts package and email service on their remote servers, to installing cabling for our broadband requirements, BCC IT have been able to help us with just about everything IT related,” said Tony. “What I particularly like is that when they quote us for a job, if the final figure comes in higher, they only charge us for what they originally quoted. Whereas, if it comes in lower, they charge us that lower price.”

One area where BCC IT have greatly improved the service Halls receive is around data backups. Putting in place a solution that Tony calls “belt and braces” to ensure there will be no problems should they suffer a server failure or some other serious event. This involves a 3 step solution. The first is a continuous backup solution to a duplicate server. This ensures that in the event of a failure, Halls can be back up and running quickly with the data from immediately before the failure.

The second step involved BCC IT providing an automatic nightly backup to a remote site. As part of their service, BCC IT monitor the occurrences and integrity of these backups to ensure they are always available.

The final step involves each branch office taking a backup of their local data on a daily basis.

Close working relationship

“This setup has given us complete peace of mind over our data,” said Tony. “We know that should something happen like a server failure or fire or flood at one of our offices, the one thing we won’t have to worry about is recovering our IT systems.

“This attention to detail is one of the reasons why we trust BCC IT to look after out IT systems, which let’s face it, are central to the business. The response and quality of their support is exceptional. They remotely monitor our key servers and with dial-in capability are able to identify and fix many problems before we are even aware of them.

“They are a superb company to work with and even though they have grown quite substantially, while we have been partnering with them, we still get personal service from the owners of the company. In my experience, this is quite unusual, as although you will normally get to see the owners at the start of the relationship, their involvement reduces over time, leaving you to deal with more junior staff. With BCC IT this has never happened.

“I believe that BCC IT will be able to look after all our IT needs for many years to come as the close working relationship we have built up with them will be difficult to replicate with another partner.”

 


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Halls Estate Agents Logo for BCC IT

“They are a superb company to work with and even though they have grown quite substantially, while we have been partnering with them, we still get personal service from the owners of the company. In my experience, this is quite unusual.”  

Tony Hughes, Company Secretary and Accountant

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