BCC IT take care of leading South West estate agents - Ocean Home – IT support and supply

Based in the South West of England, Ocean Home are so much more than estate agents. With 12 local offices in around the Bristol area, they also provide property lettings and management as well as legal, surveying and financial services to their customers.

With such a distributed setup offering a significant number of services related to property, Ocean were an early adopter of IT to improve business efficiency, productivity and customer service, as Chris McLaughlin, Director of Ocean Home, explained. “We have always been keen to adopt new information technologies as we could see the benefit that it gave both us and our customers. In our early days we utilised the services of a small local IT partner to implement and support our IT network.

“But, as we grew, we realised that we would need to find a larger organisation to look after our evolving requirements. One that not only had the critical mass of experience and expertise we would need, but also understood the unique IT requirements of our market sector.”

Best possible return on IT investment

Fortunately, Ocean’s software suppliers recommend they speak to BCC IT about their requirements. “I could tell from the first meeting that they would be a good fit for us,” said Chris. “They gave us no-nonsense advice that was not based on them trying to sell us as much as possible, but what was best for us. They also demonstrated a broad understanding of the IT needs of estate agencies, having worked with a number of them before.”

BCC IT took over the support of the entire Ocean Home IT network. Initially, as Ocean was upgrading their specialised estate agent software EncoreLive, BCC IT designed, configured and installed the necessary datacentre server that was needed to support this application.

“We have 155 users over our 12 locations with 5 different businesses running their own unique software,” said Chris. “BCC IT consultants were able to integrate all these requirements and rationalise our hardware to ensure that we were getting the best possible return on our IT investment.”

95% of IT problems solved remotely

One of the major factors that most businesses take into account when choosing an IT partner is location. It is natural that you should look for someone that is local to you, who can be at your office in a few minutes if there is problem. But, in today’s environment of increasingly complex and rapidly changing IT, many of these local IT organisations simply do not have the depth of experience or weight of numbers to support a growing business with its specialised IT requirements.

“I must admit that at the start of our relationship with BCC IT I was concerned that they were based in West Wales, “explained Chris. However, we were assured that this would not be a problem with regard to the speed and the quality of their response, and this has proved to be true. Ninety five per cent of our problems are solved by BCC IT remotely using their sophisticated monitoring and fault resolution software.

“On the rare occasion that the problem cannot be solved remotely, they have dispatched an engineer out to us first thing the next morning. So, we have never experienced any significant downtime and negative impact on our business due to an IT problem. “

Recommend business-enhancing new technologies

Commenting on the level of service that Ocean Home have received from BCC IT over the years that they have looked after their IT, Chris said. “What I found different from the outset was the access that I had to BCC IT’s owners. This gave me the confidence that the staff they sent out would always do a great job for us, as he would be keeping a close watch on things.

“This level of access has not changed over the years we have worked with them. Their consultants and engineers are always available to help us sort out our problems even when it is outside of their normal office hours. This is important for us, as estate agents we work evenings and weekends and so always need our IT available – as downtime could ultimately cost us lost business.”

Chris concluded, “Their friendly and personal approach has made, what is to me, the unglamorous topic of dealing with IT issues, a lot less worrying than what it had been in the past. I am looking forward to working with them more in the future as our business continues to grow and evolve, facing new IT challenges that I am sure, with BCC IT’s, help we will meet!”

 


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“Ninety five per cent of our problems are solved by BCC IT remotely using their sophisticated monitoring and fault resolution software. This means that they can not only resolve issues faster than someone based locally, but in many cases they have isolated a problem and fixed it before we have been aware of it.” 

Chris McLaughlin, Director

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