As a growing business with more than 260 stores and 4,000 employees nationwide Melton-based Heron knew it needed to consolidate and simplify its IT provision.
With seven suppliers providing a myriad of services, Heron wanted to bring its mobile, full fibre broadband and Wide Area Network (WAN) services under a single, secure, more cost-effective banner – and at the same time upgrade to a more scalable, and less infrastructure heavy, SIP service.
After a tendering process, Heron chose KCOM from a field of seven expert providers to deliver a wide range of its IT needs, picking the Hull-based communications company both for its technical expertise and hands-on customer service.
Alex Baines, Heron infrastructure manager, said: “We had seven different suppliers, each providing different services which could get a bit confusing at times. We needed to consolidate that seven down to one to make everything more simple.
“Working with KCOM as our partner makes life a lot easier. It simplifies the management of the billing, which is all done through one platform, thus enabling us to analyse the data ourselves. It also means the ordering and provisioning processes are all in one place making them much more straightforward”.
“There’s no more thinking, ‘who supplies that service? Who do we need to talk to?’ because it’s right there.
“As a local company who started with one shop down Holderness Road, it’s good for us to know that we can pick the phone up when we need to and get support from another local company that’s just down the road. One of the key deciding factors when we chose KCOM was quality of service.
“The support we’ve been given as we’ve moved our services over to KCOM has been great. With KCOM project managing our service migration we’ve had a seamless transition and we’ve hit our deadlines – even though some of our timescales were pretty tight.
“Even out-of-hours I know I can call my dedicated account team and they’ll be there to help.”
Alan Worthing, KCOM’s director of business, said: “We’re delighted to work with Heron to provide them with the latest WAN technology and communication solutions that are cost effective, flexible, easily scalable and secure.
“It was a complicated project requiring multi-service expertise but we are delighted to have successfully delivered a more effective, streamlined IT solution for this great local company.”