About Brookbanks
Brookbanks is a leading Master Developer and Development Consultant, who provide specialist support to landowners, housebuilders, the public sector, and commercial developers to plan, design and deliver their schemes. For the past 8 years, Brookbanks has been a client of ACUTEC using a number of business services, from IT support to website development.
On-Premise to Cloud Transition
Brookbanks has relied historically on on-premise infrastructure, with their physical server. While they found the systems suited their needs, there was a desire to modernise and felt a transition to a Cloud based solution was the right route for the business. Andrew Thorley, Operations & Executive Director, commented “the way we operate as a company is very agile and innovative, but our technology was holding us back both physically and culturally.”
Brookbanks wanted to enhance the ability for their teams to work from anywhere, quickly and easily, without the compromise of security. Equally, they wanted to step change how they collaborated internally and with clients, through to offering a simpler document sharing solution.
To replace Brookbanks’ server, ACUTEC recommended migrating their files to SharePoint and additional Microsoft 365 components to ensure the security and management of devices in a remote environment. This would mean they would no longer need to use VPNs to access shared drives away from the office, which they have not always found reliable.
To migrate to SharePoint, a lot of work was done by ACUTEC engineers behind the scenes and to reduce the impact on day-to-day business as much as possible, a lot of work was done out of hours. Andrew stated “I thought it an incredibly smooth process; ACUTEC went above and beyond. We were really impressed with the quality and efficiency of service.”
Easy File Sharing
Before SharePoint was introduced, one of the biggest issues Brookbanks had was sharing important files and documents consistently. They were using a number of different applications to share files, with no universal method depending on client requirements and security. On file sharing Andrew commented, “every additional application you use is a layer of inefficiency. Being able to get rid of lots of apps and use a single solution has allowed us to share and give a better service to our clients.”
Communication Through Teams
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the migration took place remotely. ACUTEC and Brookbanks used Microsoft Teams to communicate and make sure everything was running smoothly.
“The communication from ACUTEC was excellent all the way through. They did what they said they were going to do when they said they were going to do it.”
Using Microsoft Teams has taken some getting used to and proved a big cultural shift. “We do everything through Teams – we love it”. To help staff feel comfortable with Teams, ACUTEC offered training sessions to show what Teams could do for them and the art of the possible.
Nothing to Hold Back
Since the migration to SharePoint, the team at Brookbanks feel that there is nothing to hold them back with their technology. “I think it has made our business even more efficient and effective. It has allowed us to move forward, especially with increased working from home and ensuring ongoing collaboration between our teams”.
Confidence in ACUTEC
With ACUTEC as their IT partner, Brookbanks know that they have access to all the advice and support they need. “We trust that things are going to happen. We trust that there is someone on top of our technology, whether that’s websites, databases or security.” For something that is so important to any business, in IT, Brookbanks feel in safe hands with ACUTEC.
