Datapac improves mobility and productivity for Synchro Solutions with Office 365

Pictured Damien Lynch, Synchro Solutions and Patrick Kickham, Datapac

Synchro Solutions

Founded in 2010, Synchro Solutions is a successful Irish company which assists in the development and management of the branded store chain eMobile on behalf of their partner eircom. Synchro offers an end-to-end portfolio of services for its network of retailers throughout the Republic of Ireland. This includes providing ICT infrastructure, hardware and software, telecommunications stock, point-of- sales systems, marketing materials and all of the services that a dealer needs to run their store effectively.

Synchro employs almost 20 people in its head office in Cherrywood and also has a number of employees working in stores across the country. It owns 12 stores across Ireland, and has franchised and helps manage a further 24 stores.

The Need
Due to the continually increasing volume of data being created and stored, Synchro was reaching capacity on its central Windows SBS 2008 server in its Cherrywood headquarters. This data, much of which was email, was putting the server in danger of failing and potentially causing downtime and loss of service for employees and dealers.

The problem was being accelerated by the fact that Synchro is growing at a very fast rate. It needed a scalable solution that would allow the business to expand and support the increasing number of users.

It also needed a solution which would allow employees and dealers, dispersed across Ireland, to collaborate easily and securely at any time and from any location.

Solution
As one of Ireland’s leading providers of ICT technology and services, Datapac was chosen to deliver a new solution which could meet Synchro’s evolving requirements. Datapac advised that instead of investing in a new on-premise server, Synchro could easily improve the reliability of its existing server by migrating all of its email to the cloud. Datapac implemented Microsoft Office 365 as this was the best fit for Synchro’s overall needs.

Benefits
Microsoft Office 365 has delivered numerous benefits for Synchro. Employees and dealers can work more productively and collaborate easily, no matter where they are. It has also reduced costs and saved time for the IT team who no longer spend their time firefighting email issues or managing the exchange server. The guaranteed 99.999% uptime with Exchange Online has also ensured business continuity allowing the eMobile dealers to get on with the business of selling telecommunication services.

Damien Lynch, IT Manager of Synchro Solutions said, “We immediately began to see benefits from Office 365, most notably the 50% reduction in calls from employees and stores with email issues. This is not only driving improved productivity in our head office, in the stores and out on the road, but it has also freed up my time to concentrate on business growth projects.”

“The subscription based model is also really attractive for a business of our size as we have no upfront capital outlay and can predict our monthly costs.”

Scalability
As a cloud based service, Microsoft Office 365 removes any of the previous capacity issues experienced by Synchro and is enabling seamless growth as it easily scales with the company.

Damien Lynch continued, “As a retail business the stores need to increase their contract staff during busy periods such as Christmas to manage the seasonal increase in demand. With the previous system, adding new temporary employees was cumbersome and took up a lot of our time. Often, these licences could remain idle for the rest of the year, increasing costs. Office 365 delivers more flexibility and cost saving as it enables us to easily scale, up or down, the number of subscriptions we need, when we need them.”

Secure mobility
With 36 stores managed by Synchro around the country, it has a widely dispersed team, many of whom are ‘road warriors’, travelling between its different locations. Email is an essential tool for Synchro employees, to communicate internally and with customers. Datapac’s solution is delivering improved availability and secure mobility for these employees, ensuring they can access email wherever they are and stay connected to head office.

Collaboration and productivity
SharePoint Online and Lync Online have also been implemented for the employees at head office. This is having a positive impact on how the business communicates and shares information. Employees can remotely collaborate on documents in real-time through SharePoint. Lync is currently being used to deliver training webinars to dealers and Synchro hopes to roll it out to all employees over the coming months, enabling them to take advantage of the productivity tools such as video conferencing and instant messaging. This will ensure the business continues to provide the highest quality of service to all of its colleagues, dealers and customers countrywide.

Conclusion
Patrick Kickham, Director, Datapac said “Datapac implemented an integrated solution which combines the familiar Microsoft Office applications with the productivity and collaboration power of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online. For a successful and growing business like Synchro it offers them the flexibility, scalability and business continuity they need, and is already delivering improved ways of working for employees and dealers across the country.”

Damien Lynch, IT Manager of Synchro Solutions concluded “Datapac’s solution provides us with a very reliable and flexible communications platform which helps us to seamlessly grow our network of stores throughout Ireland. We also need to be as connected as possible with our colleagues and dealers, and Office 365 gives us the ability to do this in an effective and simple way.”