Page 20 - PinnacleCustomerMagazineWinter2017

A major business decision Disaster averted

Mark recalls the lightbulb moment when Mark’s growing confidence in Pinnacle has proved
Pinnacle introduced its IT Support Division: well-founded. Today, the smooth flow of business
data means that staff can quickly access key
“Given the complexity of today’s IT estates, information, which accelerates business processes,
there were clear advantages to bringing notably across the sales cycle.
support for all aspects of our IT infrastructure,
not just Sage 200, but our servers, networks, Mark highlights one potentially catastrophic incident
third-party software… under one roof, with a that demonstrates Pinnacle’s ability to stop an issue
single point of accountability. We were looking turning into a crisis:
for help not just to keep our IT ticking over but to
develop an infrastructure that would add value “When a failure in a junction box affected the
to our business.” network, Pinnacle was able to recover our data
on the duplicate server it had installed in our High
With Pinnacle having a local presence across Wycombe office. Without this built-in safeguard, we
the UK and Ireland, its organisation aligned would have lost a week’s sales; that’s equivalent to
with Shawston’s own expanding network of £300,000.”
distribution centres and sales offices.
He points out,
However, the move to Pinnacle for support was
not a step undertaken lightly, as Mark notes, “It’s not only the financial damage that such a loss
of service would cause, there’s the reputational hit,
“It was a big decision. If it had gone wrong, too. Our customers rely on us implicitly for next-day
there would have been massive repercussions service and if we can’t live up to their expectations,
for the business. Fortunately, I was able to we’re soon out of the picture. We’re only as good
speak with another Pinnacle support customer, as the last time we solved a problem for them, and
and their positive experience of Pinnacle’s there’s no margin for error.”
expertise in performing an installation was
very reassuring. For my part, I’m now happy to
recommend Pinnacle to others considering
taking this step.”

Since the move, Pinnacle has centralised
Shawston’s IT network to the Hyde head office
and carried out server upgrades to eliminate
performance issues and bottlenecks. For
example, the sales office in High Wycombe used
to have chronic problems with performance.
Pinnacle implemented virtualisation technology
with site-to-site replication and failover capability,
which brought an instant boost to performance.

Pinnacle News & Views 20