New, Local, Business takes advantage of Cloud Computing to aid Business Growth

What do you do when :

• You spot a gap in the market? and
• Think you can do it better than anybody else? and
• Know you can increase customer satisfaction.

Well you leave your well paid job and start your own business, in the middle of a recession. Well that’s what Darren George did when he started Firecare Solutions last summer. Darren had previous management experience at a large UK financial institution and then a number of years working at a Fire Protection Company in the South.

Whilst there he realised that he could provide to customers a better and different service to what they currently receive. Once he started the business and got his website done he went all out to build his business. He started networking (where I met him), telesales and a whole manner of ingenious activities to drum up business.

Within 3 months he was joined by Mandy Wrenn, who had been a senior manager at the same financial company. Very quickly they built the demand and then took on more engineers and staff.

I interviewed Mandy a few days ago and asked her few pertinent questions about how our Cloud Computing Solution has helped Firecare increase their business:

Hi Mandy. Please can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Darren George and I (Mandy Wrenn) run FireCare Solutions and we are specialists in fire and Health & Safety protection for businesses. This covers everything from doing Fire or Health & Safety Assessments, to providing fire protection equipment (extinguishers, fire doors, alarms and emergency lighting) and training staff.

Before you started working with us how you do go about using IT?

We had the usual small business infrastructure before we joined Vermont. We have a website, customer details in a variety of file formats and use Microsoft Outlook. These were on PCs or laptops used in single locations.

What problems where you having at the time that made you consider us?

We are growing quite rapidly and we were thinking very hard about how to manage a low cost base for the business – to keep prices competitive – and whether we should move to business premises (as a start up we had successfully launched the business from a home office).

As we became busier, not being in the office all the time together meant that we couldn’t see each other’s diaries, or access customer files so we had to do extra work by double checking everything. We were delaying getting back to customers as we had to always be checking everything .

Obviously you signed up for our cloud Package but what was the single biggest reason that you decided to choose us?

You listened to what we were trying to achieve and put together a solution tailored to our needs. I never felt that you had a solution to a problem and tried to make that fit us.

Also, when I came to see you, you had put together a proper presentation, tailored to us, so just because we were a small business, it didn’t mean we didn’t get treated with respect.

Why is that important to you?

We are a start-up and can’t afford to make mistakes Time is precious at the moment).  We have to be able to continue to build the business so we need flexibility. We are ambitious and need to make sure our speed of growth can be matched by our infrastructure.

Equally, we want to work with people who understand us, want to encourage and help us.

Since we’ve implemented our cloud computing package for you, what has been the biggest benefit you’ve experienced with your business?

Being able to view and book directly into each other’s diaries has been great. We can close business leads immediately without an additional phone call back to the customer.

How has it impacted your employees?

They feel part of a team. It’s funny, we don’t see each other that much but because we can all access the ‘FireCare Solutions Cloud’ it helps the employees feel part of something – even if it is virtual.

What about you personally? Has it had a positive impact for you?

We can write new sales and marketing material and it can be immediately available to the team. We can quickly respond to feedback from the team and change anything we hold instantly. Everyone knows they are looking at the latest information.

Has it had any impact on the way you service your customers, or on your sales and profitability?

We can book sales appointments in directly without worrying about whether the person may be somewhere else and avoid double bookings or rescheduling. We have seen an uplift in the telesales performance as we can book an engineer there & then to close the deal.

If you where talking to other owners and you discussed our package what would you say about our Cloud Computing Package?

We do talk about the Cloud and Vermont all the time!! It has really transformed our business. We don’t have to think about getting business premises for some time now – we can run a virtual team (and given that our team are either engineers or the sales team so should all be out & about) until we choose to move to an office with no problems.  We can be cost effective in running our business, which in terms of staying competitive in these difficult times, is critical. We also are saving time & money in keeping our business and customer information in one place, and having Vermont do the backups.

Is there anything else you wish we were doing or providing that we are not?

No really – you guys are great.(I love this bit , Mandy really did say this!)

Contact Mandy or Darren through their website www.firecaresolutions.co.uk