Power Outage
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in Service Announcements on April 26th, 2011
A power failure at our Data Centre on Saturday 23rd April resulted in some websites and email services being temporarily unavailable.
Whilst most services were up and running shortly afterwards, some services have been affected by a hardware failure in the failover systems and are continuing to be worked on this morning.
emails sent while services were down will either be re-delivered by the senders’ systems today or will have been returned to the sender with a rejection notice.
TheITGuys completes acquisition of SEO business
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on February 8th, 2011
SEO
The ITGuys has completed the acquisition of an SEO business in 2010 as we see this as a growth area alongside IT Support. The company that we acquired has been working with SEO since 2005 and comes with around 70 active clients.
We feel strongly that the capability we can now offer in IT Support and SEO management puts us in a unique position as an IT Supplier where we can add more direct value to our customer base.
Get To Number 1 On Google
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on February 1st, 2011
do you want your company to be No.1 on Google?
Google Adwords
there aren’t many things in life that you need more than being No.1 on Google (of course you have got to be running a business or require public exposure) - what is the point in being anywhere else?
This month we are posting out our Google promotion, highlighting our ability to help you start out and market your company using Google adwords and campaigns. We hook in Google analytics and optimise your web site content for a low monthly service price. The results from this can be outstanding and can generate some fantastic business leads for you to follow up - it will leave you wondering why you hadn’t done it before.
Get in touch and we can take a look at your website and see what we can do for you.
Proactive IT Support
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on January 31st, 2011
we look after your IT leaving you to look after your business
Proactive IT Support
Back in October 2008 we reviewed our support services as we were being asked by clients to provide better value. Our clients wanted to know why we only came to see them once a year and why we didn’t provide regular health checks. Of course we have always be available in a reactive way but we had to consider what it was that a. a customer would pay and b. how far we should go. After a little thought about our structure and lots of consultation with a few selected clients we were able to formulate a list of services that our clients could work with and afford.
Since launching the Proactive IT Service we have seen a big drop in reactive support - no longer are we bombarded by telephone call after telephone call as we are picking up the little niggles (or sometimes big problems) on our regular monthly visit. To find out a little bit more you can look here or download our PDF flyer.
theitguys.co.uk Help sales-i Save Money With Telephone Conference Facilities
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on May 13th, 2009
sales-i provide forward thinking sales acceleration software using software as a service for delivery to their customer base. Their software analyses sales patterns and provides realtime, up-sell opportunities and increased buying behaviour, which leads to customer focused profitable selling!
sales-i and their team of Sales Executives have used KomplettPBX, which is based on Asterisk and trixbox from theitguys.co.uk for a couple of years now. KomplettPBX is a telephone system that is packed with powerful call-centre style features and affordable to any size of company.
Paul Black CEO of sales-i is always striving to improve his company and its facilities and if Paul can realise a saving by switching his supply, like any astute businessman, he will!
Paul came to me with a problem; the sales-i sales team use telephone system based conference facilities in the USA to provide a client voice meeting location for training and demonstrating the sales-i software. 20 or so clients dial a toll-free number and join the conference with sales or training staff from sales-i.
The problem with this is the high cost of the US conference facilities. It is a rented service and in the US it is expected that the host (sales-i in this case) pays for the clients call. 20 users for over an hour plus the calls from the UK times by a few conferences per day into the facility amounts to a small monthly fortune. Especially as the business is growing rapidly through the success of the sales-i automation software.
KomplettPBX and Asterisk have the ability to provide conference facilities, effectively meeting rooms for clients or anyone with the available PIN and number to dial in to the system to converge or collaborate together. As the system is VoIP (Voice over IP - calls travel over the Internet) based we could effectively trunk calls at no cost from the USA straight in through the VoIP interface. So using a company in the USA called www.tollfreeforwarding.com who provide numbers for any state in the US, we registered a telephone number for sales-i demonstrations and one for training. Two conference boxes were added to the phone system and the numbers directed in.
Paul Black now enjoys big savings every month, plus he now has more control over the conference facilities. Additionally, every conference call is recorded and can be played back and used for training purposes.
This post demonstrates just one of the thousands of features on the KomplettPBX phone system from theitguys.co.uk. If you are looking to make savings or improve your telephony facilities or if you need bespoke telephony consultancy services then call 0845 004 6789 to discuss your requirements.
Smarthomes Commission theitguys.co.uk to Build Their Lettings and Sales Management Database
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on May 6th, 2009
Smarthomes are a Birmingham based estate agency founded in 1998, their superior branding and dynamic approach to sales and lettings is well known in the area and has made this company a success.
Smarthomes had the need for better control and management of their data for lettings, sales and customers - this is where we stepped in. They desperately needed to get away from the legacy spreadsheets they used to manage their business. Of course there is a place for spreadsheets; an ordered list of details that can be amended and saved to a central location, such as a server… BUT the downside is when the information needs to be shared between a group of users in a team and that team and information is contracting and expanding daily. Sharing spreadsheets is a dangerous activity, especially if users are not IT literate. So many times I have been asked to restore a spreadsheet from backup because the data has become corrupt… this amounts to lost time, lost information and of course lost money!
To replace the spreadsheet process is a relatively small and low cost job BUT big leap forward from a management perspective. The advantages are immediately noticeable; greater control, powerful data retrieval, better productivity, improved user and team collaboration, true shared company data. The information can be controlled, who can see what and when with user access control - over the local network or even the Internet, serving remote offices and field executives. Reporting and exporting are a breeze and a well designed database system can grow and change with your business.
There are so many benefits (far too many to list here) to replacing your legacy spreadsheets and improving your management process with a simple to use shared database - further information is available here. Why not drop us a line and we can discuss your ideas and requirements, lets see how theitguys.co.uk can streamline your business data process.
Call us on 0845 004 6789 or use our contact form and we will get in touch…
Nationwide demolition company chooses theitguys.co.uk to develop their Tender and CRM database solution
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on April 27th, 2009
Today, theitguys.co.uk won the contract to design and deliver a bespoke tender and mini-CRM solution to assist Armoury Demolition, a successful Birmingham based demolition and recycling company. Armoury Demolition have been using a mixture of systems to manage their customer sales and contracts.
Tony McLean (CEO) quotes: Now is the time to streamline the service we supply to our customers, in this day and age we need to be smart to stay one step ahead of our competition! Traditionally we have found it difficult to manage and maintain our tender process - in these difficult times having the competitive edge will help us win more business.
The solution that we will deliver is based on FileMaker Pro. FileMaker provides a wealth of functionality including Instant Web Publishing, Remote Database Hosting and Rapid Application Development (RAD) for building powerful database applications for business. Using this framework allows us to keep the costs to a minimum but deliver a powerful business tool and application, empowering small business owners without breaking the bank. Our FileMaker solutions also scale well, one database can be used by 99 simultaneous users in any location on this planet (assuming there is an Internet connection).
If you need a database solution to tidy those spreadsheets that are gluing your business processes together then get in touch, we will help you streamline your business….
Web Site Online Shop - www.thebatteryguys.co.uk
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on April 8th, 2009
….another success story from Pointnet Solutions and theitguys.co.uk.
Built by Pointnet and theitguys.co.uk
Did you know Pointnet Solutions and theitguys.co.uk build e-commerce online web shops?
A few months ago we were tasked by our customer thebatteryguys.co.uk to build an e-commerce solution to sell batteries online for cars, vans, scooters … you name it ….
Simon our client said: We had a concept in mind that needed assistance, firstly in background marketing and research to confirm our belief that the business model was sound. This output convinced us to launch the development and we agreed an outline schedule of works and stages of development. This gave everyone clarity of what was being done, when and at what cost. The site development and associated marketing and advertising around the site has been superb and the site is a commercial success achieving instant results and above the predicted sales forecasts. We will use Pointnet Solutions and theitguys.co.uk again for our next online project.
Please feel free to visit the site at: www.thebatteryguys.co.uk
We [Pointnet Solutions] got to work using our agile approach to software application development and produced a solution that had limited AJAX controls and integrated with Protex the payment gateway to get the cash.
Our primary focus when developing e-commerce applications is on the marketing and functionality - the design, although important is designed to be as simple as possible (from a users perspective) - customers are king - whizz bang looks cool but doesn’t sell stuff!
Launch day saw 20 orders fly through the store, targets were met and our customer very happy. Since that day the store has exceeded expectations and has continued to grow from strength to strength (if fact you wouldn’t believe how good even if we boasted about it here) - a true success story. Our customer has now asked us to setup a different kind of online shop selling another off-the-shelf product - more details coming soon…..
Do you need an e-commerce shop to retail your products to the UK or world? Click here or call 0845 004 6789 to get in touch and we can discuss how we can build a success story for you.
Cloud Computing - What is it and should I be bothered?
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on April 5th, 2009
what is cloud computing?
For a few years now theitguys.co.uk have been supplying remote software services where you pay a low monthly fee, we provide you with a service and you take advantage of our data centre facilities with technical support and backup. Services such as email, calendar and contacts collaboration, email scanning and cleaning, remote backup are a few that can be defined as cloud computing.
Additionally theitguys.co.uk manufacture/ develop software that runs as a service in the cloud - commonly known as “software as a service” (SaaS). In days gone by companies would have an Access database developed that handled processes within their business, these days software is often required externally as people work remotely, on the road or from home. The safest and easiest way to deliver that is by cloud computing or over the Internet using Rich Internet Applications (RIA) - click here to see our software page for more information on RIA, Flex and AIR technologies.
should you embrace cloud computing?
Things are definitely moving in the direction of cloud computing and the biggest reason is cost and power. Why bother running your own servers and services that need to be constantly updated with new features at great expense when for a fixed low fee you can benefit from the latest in technology from your cloud supplier?
Lets look at the pros and cons:
Pros:
- reduced hardware, software, network, support, accommodation and environmental costs
- greater flexibility, mobility, utility, operational stability, process control and activity monitoring
- faster updates, procedural changes, training and debugging
- better security, scalability, use of resources, control of data access and recovery from catastrophic failures
Cons:
- dependence on centralised server and services that are in-sourced or outsourced, plus the need for fixed and mobile bandwidth everywhere
- instantaneous propagation of service-affecting errors, software problems, mistakes and other snafus
- catastrophic and instantaneous failure mode at a terminal level and no one can work until the problem is fixed. This is leading many people to opt for a ‘thinish’ client model with a limited offline capability such as Google Desktop.
With cloud computing the idea is to try and afford new degrees of freedom and flexibility in order to up productivity while maintaining the integrity operations and security of access and data.
Overall this is about efficiency and cost saving but these should not be at the risk of operational fidelity.
If you need more information please do not hesitate to contact us. Please comment below if you have an opinion.
Internet Protection Server
Posted by TheITGuys Blogger in theitguys.co.uk Blog on February 8th, 2009
STOP! abuse of your Internet. Block services such as FaceBook and MSN.
Internet Protection Server
For the last few years we have been providing limited Internet protection to our clients using small and inexpensive routers. We have supplied advanced firewall devices which in the past have been bespoke units tailored to each connection type.
Recently we have had cause to build more of these devices as UK banks are requesting that our customers have better protection over their data. Customers were also asking for better monitoring and reporting facilities for their Internet connection. The new firewall devices need regular protection upgrades and maintenance therefore we decided to make it easy and relatively cheap to take advantage of much better protection by renting the boxes to our clients.
We charge one day for consultation, installation and configuration and £69 per month. The device remains the property of theitguys.co.uk and full support and maintenance is included in the price.
If you would like further information please do not hesitate to get in touch. Click here to ask us questions.
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