GB Building Solutions

GB Building Solutions chooses Timico to connect its 35 sites across the UK

GB Building Solutions is a privately owned national Building Solutions Provider operating in five key sectors: commercial, education, accommodation, hotels and leisure and healthcare, and across the UK from their five regional offices based in Sunbury, Rugby, Wakefield, Manchester and Newcastle.

One of GB’s key strategies for operational improvement was to enhance its IT infrastructure in terms of connectivity between the company’s different locations. The key drivers behind this were to increase bandwidth, introduce IP telephony and provide additional services such web conferencing - all increasing business efficiencies.

"We were keen to explore other options to the traditional Network Services provided directly by BT. Due to historical reasons our existing Wide Area Network (WAN) was split into two; one half being MPLS and the other an ADSL IP VPN. This structure meant we had specific points of failure, with the additional frustration that the MPLS circuit had no ‘pro-activeness’, little reporting functionality and provided much lower bandwidth than our business required.

After exploring various options we eventually turned to Timico, an ISP that could provide a hosted IP based solution that provided the improvements that we desired – a secure, supported, flexible WAN solution using the latest technology from BT’s 21CN at a cost that was attractive to our business model." explains Mark Hardcastle, IT Manager at GB.

"Installing a single managed Private Wide Area Network (PWAN) into the business has provided demonstrable benefits. We have increased bandwidth between our 35 sites, have fewer points of failure and have considerably improved the level of service. As we now have higher bandwidth we have the capability to use the PWAN for more than just transferring data - the next phase of the project is to install Timico’s hosted VoIP solution across our network, further reducing our costs as we will have one complete manageable data and voice network."

Timico managed the project of installing the PWAN into GB as efficiently as possible in order to minimise business disruption and GB was assigned a dedicated project manager to make the move from its existing provider as seamless as possible. Taking ownership of any questions or issues customers may face, dealing with them as quickly as possible and being transparent and easy to deal with are key components of Timico’s ethos of providing customers with a ‘full service wrap’.

"The entire team at Timico worked incredibly hard to make the transition from our existing provider as easy as possible and the project was managed to the deadlines we had set and actually came in under budget. In addition the solutions they have provided us have been well planned out, tailored to what we need and most importantly in my eyes made our lives a lot easier. Timico’s customer service and the expertise shown by staff have been above and beyond what we have experienced in the past and I would have no hesitation in recommending them to any other company that is looking to improve the provision of their Voice and Data Networks - basically they were a pleasure to work with!" concludes Mark Hardcastle.

Mark Hardcastle
GB Building Solutions

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