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CASE STUDY - GREEN LANTERN AV LIMITEDSERVICES PROVIDED: THE BUSINESSGreen Lantern AV is a leading audio visual rental company providing services to clients across the UK and Europe. Their business has two distinct departments; Green Lantern AV which provides AV rental equipment to companies for training seminars, presentations, small conferences etc, and Green Lantern Events which takes an altogether more encompassing role as it org anises and manages the presentations for large corporate events such as conferences and exhibitions. IDENTIFYING EXISTING PROCESSESGreen Lantern worked with stand alone PC's, each with its own dial-up internet connection and individual software configuration. The PC's were all different brands and ran a mix of Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional. There was also a mix of Microsoft Office 97, 2000 and XP. Green Lantern felt that they were not making the most efficient use of their IT as they explained their day to day routines to us. Clients would regularly send them large PowerPoint presentations by email. These presentations would clog up their email systems as their dial-up connections struggled to download them, often taking up to 4 or 5 hours. This sometimes caused staff to wait until 9pm to finish downloading email in order to prepare events for clients the next day. On many occasions the email download would fail and they would have to start all over again. Once the email was received the PowerPoint presentations had to be shared amongst different Green Lantern staff through the various stages of production. As they were not networked this involved copying the presentations back and forth using a zip disk and physically moving the zip drive from PC to PC where needed. To complicate matters further, clients would often call to announce that they were resending the attachments due to last minute changes. Once the PowerPoint presentations were ready for use they would be transferred to notebook computers (again by attaching a zip drive and copying files onto zip disks) before being processed for delivery to the event venue. SOLUTION ANALYSISGreen Lantern commissioned Ebit Solutions to evaluate their business processes and suggest how they might improve efficiency through the use of their IT. We identified several key areas where Green Lantern could:
THE EBIT SOLUTIONAfter discussing our proposal at length Ebit Solutions worked with Green Lantern to reach a solution which was
The steps we took were as follows.
Once all systems were running Green Lantern found that they were able to forget about the wait for email. With their new broadband connection large email messages that previously took up to 3 or 4 hours to download now arrive automatically and only take 3 or 4 minutes. As broadband is always on we configured their email software to check for email every 5 minutes so that the emails arrive in the background. Staff no longer have to "check my email" - their email checks them! Once they received the PowerPoint presentations the teams could easily share the files by simply opening them up from one another's PC in exactly the same way as opening up a file from your own PC. No fiddling with disks or moving around drives. A local area network operates at extremely high speeds so there is no wait to copy or open files. As the teams now work on the same versions of Windows XP and Office XP they find it much easier to collaborate on projects. Everybody can open and save the PowerPoint presentations, Excel spread sheets and Word documents without worrying about whether or not its going to ruin the format for others. Additionally, users can work on one another's PC and know exactly how to get around it. When all the systems are different, sharing is a major difficulty. With the new system in place, the staff are able to copy the PowerPoint presentations directly to the notebooks from their own PC's when they are ready for exporting to the venues, irrespective of where in the office the notebooks happen to be. Wireless network technology means that the notebooks only have to be switched on to be accessible on the local network. No cables need to be connected. And at 54 Mbs, copying the data over to the notebooks is extremely quick. CASE SUMMARYGreen Lantern found that their productivity improved overnight. As with all things, there was a very short learning curve at the beginning and Ebit Solutions was there throughout to assist with any queries and support issues that were raised. Implementing their LAN and WLAN (Wireless LAN) was a cost effective and affordable way to move the business forward as Green Lantern now spend less time waiting for their IT to provide them with the functionality they need to run their business. Green Lantern have realized that IT shouldn't get in the way - it should be the way! If you would like further information about this case study please contact us. Ebit Solutions is a total solutions provider. We sourced all the equipment, PC's and tools required to implement this solution. Green Lantern are happy to discuss their Ebit Services with those who enquire, however, initial contact must be made through Ebit Solutions. |
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