Haslams estate agents

Haslams is Reading’s longest-established estate agent, and prides itself on being an independent specialist in the local property market. Haslams has a fast-growing sales team of approximately forty staff and, in addition to their residential sales, lettings and property management departments, Haslams has a dedicated land and new homes team.

Business challenge

Due to growth and expansion, Haslams needed to relocate from their previous office space into a larger building. Prior to the relocation, Haslams suffered from typical small business IT infrastructure issues such as legacy systems, a range of PC’s (of different ages and quality), on-site servers, and telephony resilience problems. Haslams saw the move as an opportunity to provide an operational advantage to their staff by redesigning their business systems and moving to a cloud-based solution with the addition of upgraded wireless and telephony infrastructures.

The solution

When the relocation was in the planning stage, Haslams contacted Prodec Networks to discuss the full scope of the technology requirements. As experts in virtualisation and hosting solutions, Prodec Networks was able to work with Haslams to provide a bespoke cloud-based solution, designed specifically for their business.

Prodec proposed and implemented a hosted, cloud-based voice and data business platform. Whilst all of Haslams’ infrastructure had previously been located onsite, all that was required in the new office was data cabling, handsets, network switches, wireless access points and workstations. The Prodec solution hosts Haslams servers, applications, software and email in Prodec's UK-only datacentres.

Prodec was also responsible for reviewing Haslams’ office connectivity, and improved the existing system by providing point-to-point lines linking the office directly to Prodec’s datacentres. This increased connection resilience and security for Haslams’ systems as all traffic passed through the hosted next-generation firewalls. The voice solution incorporated a Mitel Unified Communications (UC) platform which made the phone system more efficient and flexible, and gave Haslams a competitive edge in their marketplace.

As part of the complete package, Prodec Networks continues to provide ongoing technical support, through a dedicated account manager and an experienced technical team who are always only a phone call away.

The results

Prodec’s hosted services has provided Haslams with an IT infrastructure that now provides fantastic operational advantages, whilst giving their staff flexibility and agility in how they work. Because the entirety of Haslams' business systems are hosted and supported by Prodec, it means that Haslams’ staff can concentrate on what they do best, rather than having to worry about the IT systems or the underlying hardware.

By moving their IT systems to the cloud, Haslams has seen a reduction in their base level telephony costs, and the new solution is much more scalable and agile. The flexibility of the cloud means that tasks such as setting up new users is extremely easy and very low cost. There’s also no longer a requirement for expensive hardware or licencing when a new employee is welcomed to the business, as everything is managed and maintained through the cloud.

By implementing the Mitel UC platform as part of the infrastructure improvements, Haslams has also enjoyed the benefits of better call control, improved customer service capabilities, and the ability to tailor and monitor hunt groups within sales teams. As well as this, the platform also offers greater flexibility and allows staff to work remotely using softphones when required.

Due to Prodec’s hosted solution, Haslams now benefits from increased flexibility, agility and scalability. With around the clock support available to Haslams, its employees can concentrate on providing the best possible customer service to their clients.