A leading provider of software and services

Client

Knowledge Solutions (www.knowledgeuk.com) is a leading provider of software and services that enable organisations to align their workforce to key business goals. Their solutions cover end-user adoption for organisations deploying IT systems; e-learning solutions for product, process and organisational change; certification management and knowledge assurance solutions; and ECDL/ICDL solutions. Customers include Barclay’s Bank, Moorfields Eye Hospital and the London Borough of Islington amongst many others.
Headquartered in the UK with offices in Sweden, Knowledge Solutions relies on strong customer relationships to maintain high levels of service to their customer base. A recent acquisition of Enlight AB, a leading Swedish based certification and ECDL company, prompted a major review of their CRM strategy.

Client Requirements

Knowledge Solutions had been running an on-demand SugarCRM system since March 2008, but faced the challenge of merging this with Enlight’s legacy Microsoft CRM system and deploying SugarCRM across the company. This had to take into account multiple locations, a multinational client base, increased headcount and had to achieve a single view of customers and prospects.
The need for flexibility and scalability, combined with budgetary constraints driven by a doubling of the head count, made SugarCRM a natural choice. It was decided to bring the system in-house to achieve greater cost savings and gain increased control of the environment.
Due to the business-critical nature of the system it was imperative that the “switch over” was seamless and caused minimal disruption to the daily business operations in all locations
An additional requirement was to integrate the MSCRM knowledge base and incident logging facility into their SugarCRM installation.

Lemon's Solution

The migration of the 2GB of MSCRM database involved an initial exercise of data profiling resulting in target cleansing and a bespoke de-duplication framework. The contact, account and opportunity data, together with all their related activities (tasks, phone calls, meetings, etc) and notes were then mapped between the two relational data structures, taking into account the differing customisations in both the source and target applications.
We had to develop the new on-site installation of SugarCRM to accommodate both the MSCRM data and the customised SugarCRM data from the old installation.
We created a new SugarCRM test environment and ran multiple iterative test migrations to guarantee a smooth transition; an added complication here being the ongoing customisation to the live SugarCRM instance that had to be managed. Once the client was satisfied that the migration process worked in full and the results were given sign-off, we set a “Go live” date. A co-ordinated shutdown of the two “off-shore” databases was implemented followed by the execution of a final migration run in scheduled down-time, with the new application up and running for business as anticipated.
We also provided guidance for their users and continue to offer ongoing support and further development.
Moving forward we are integrating their existing web portal functionality allowing customers to log incidents directly from the Knowledge Solutions web site.

Client's comments

“With the acquisition of Enlight AB we needed to review and rationalise our CRM strategy. The aim was to move from two separate hosted CRM systems to a single system that would provide a global view of activity. This was complicated by our requirement to bring our existing SugarCRM system in-house and the mission critical nature of CRM to the company – both systems contained crucial information on our customers and prospects that was used on a daily basis.

“Lemon Computing helped us devise a strategy to manage the migration and in-housing, building in contingency plans in case of any data loss. The project was professionally executed, with a dedicated resource from Lemon Consulting working closely with us on site. Unforeseen issues with the data structure and problems with language and currency conversions were quickly overcome, and we went live on time with a minimum amount of downtime."

“All told the experience was excellent, what could have been a frustrating and risky project went extremely smoothly, to time and budget. We’re currently working with Lemon to develop a bespoke customer service portal interface for our website and have a number of other projects in the pipeline.”

John Cafferkey, Marketing Manager, Knowledge Solutions

A well renowned physiotherapy consultancy based in Greenwich

Before:

The customer had an unreliable Linux server and did not want to move to expensive Microsoft server licenses. The current Linux server was boxed down and unfortunately not easily upgradeable.
The customer also wanted the ability to work remotely from the office. They wanted access to data files and gain access to their bespoke database. Additionally, the client wanted to improve their webmail system as the existing one was very basic with little functionality.

After:

Lemon Computing migrated their old server to a new, better supported and more efficient system. Migration of email and data was smooth and provided little problems for the customer. Downtime was kept to a minimum and users were able to work during the day whilst we migrated data and users from one system to the other.

We implemented one of our security products, the Lemonwall, our firewall solution which provides high security levels for our customers network. Using open source software the customer had no license expenses for secure remote access. Remote access client is easy to use and reliable.

The webmail program we implemented gave them a global shared address book which they didn't have previously. It was something they wished for and were very happy that we added it at no extra charge

The customer was very pleased with the speed, precision and cost of the migration.

A Leading estate agency based in SW London

The Challenge

Entire business network crippled by virus which spread from machine to machine within the company, existing I.T. support company was not providing adequate protection & security.

The company approached Lemon Computing via a referral and asked to fix their current issue, put a temp solution in place and then design a new network for them .They were looking for a secure network design that would offer

better virus protection
reduction in spam
reduction is spyware
web content filtering
increased security
central data storage
central email system
easier backup solution

Lemon's Solution

Our first goal was to restore the Internet and email connectivity in all offices. The virus was identified and a solution built to roll out to each office. Internet connectivity and email was restored in all office. We ensured that critical windows updates were completed to prevent further infection, they were upgraded to the latest Windows service pack, the anti-virus program they were using was removed and replaced with Sophos Anti-virus.

he design of their new network was based on keeping all data, email, web access and administration centrally managed, with more sophisticaed security and a much more comprehensive backup solution. Their email system was changed so that users email was stored and backed up centrally, we also implemented webmail.

Business Benefits

· The client investment into their infrastructure and IT will prevent further business disruptions and security for their business critical data
· Staff can work more efficiently thereby providing a better service
· Administration of the network is greatly reduced