Executive Communication Centres (ECC), operate high end serviced offices across the UK, including locations in Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Birmingham. They use Positive Computing for a range of services, including the recent migration to Office 365. Here ECC Managing Director Tony Waldron explains why they chose Positive Computing.

Ten years ago, Positive were an ECC client, operating out of our business centre in Reading; they’re a nice bunch of guys, very personable, and we started using them locally, before eventually rolling them out to other locations. Today we use them across our portfolio of business centres.

They tend to oversee our infrastructure, fit out our communications rooms, provide hard wired and WiFi solutions and manage our communication channels such as broadband. In addition, they provide things like online overnight backup for our staff and fully programme our computer hardware and servers. They recently recommended and managed the migration over to Microsoft Office 365, which was entirely new to us, and the transfer was seamless.
Positive held our hand through the process and they moved about 40 people across onto Office 365 over one weekend.

Given that we tend to have quite a lot of traffic back and forth between our centres, and that we transmit our accounting systems between our various locations and head office, in hindsight it is clear their recommendation was absolutely correct. Not only because it has proved to be much more efficient for us, but also because it provides greater flexibility to share files and makes us less reliant on our physical servers. Positive were very helpful in allaying my fears of effectively handing over all of my material goods and instead putting our trust in the ether.

Positive held our hand through the process and they moved about 40 people across onto Office 365 over one weekend. We went home on Friday night and came back in on Monday morning with no down time and without experiencing any problems. It was excellent.

We offer a five star service and when one of our clients asks for help with IT we make the connection to Positive. We’re not experts in IT and these guys are, so it makes sense to connect them. Positive are able to steer the client through a menu of services.

Positive were very helpful in allaying my fears of effectively handing over all of my material goods and instead putting our trust in the ether.

Most people, in one way or another, take up our recommendation. It’s helpful for us, because it makes sense for our clients to use a provider that understands the entire operation and is able to therefore avoid problems occurring in the ‘seam’ between two IT companies. Furthermore we know that our clients are going to get a comprehensive service.

Our endorsement, which is made across approximately 500 individual offices, is clear. We are able to confirm to our clients that they can use any IT company they like. However, experience shows us that if they use Positive and act on the advice given, they can be sure to get the best out of our IT provision.

Finally, I’ve been involved in the managed workspace sector for 25 years and, during that time, have set up and operated more than 40 business centres. Having dealt with larger (national) suppliers as well as local guys during that time, it is my experience that, where we have dealt with the latter, we tend to have a good relationship with the principals and, subsequently, if we need something done, it gets done quickly.

I know, absolutely, that if I pick up the phone to one of the Positive principals, I get a response straight away. They are interested in fixing the problem, or dealing with the opportunity the problem presents. And that’s rare these days. If you have to rely on cutting through layers of management to get things done, then problems just don’t get resolved.