“Belvoir Lettings “let” Cobweb Solutions take care of it's communication needs.”

Belvoir Letting Agents has turned to Cobweb Solutions for a robust and scalable messaging and collaboration solution to manage the growing communication requirements of its residential lettings business.

Cobweb's Microsoft Hosted Exchange service enables staff within Belvoir offices and franchisees to have 24*7 access to email, diary, address books and documents through desktop PCs, laptops and mobile devices. A total of 200 managers and staff currently benefit from the service, including 20 staff situated in Belvoir's central office in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

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Belvoir is the UK's leading property management franchise offering specialist services in residential lettings, properties to let, buy-to-let and property rental for tenants and landlords.

The company has 88 offices located throughout England, Ireland and Scotland

The Challenge

Belvoir required a flexible infrastructure that could accommodate its business expansion plans. The organisation has grown considerably since its inception 10 years ago with turnover up by 30%-50% each year. This growth is set to continue with 12 to 14 new office openings planned in 2006. In addition, the company has just launched the first of its specialist student lettings divisions in Nottingham called 'Student Living.'

Prior to the implementation of Cobweb's Microsoft Hosted Exchange Service, Belvoir's communication systems were fragmented. The company was using a central Lotus Notes server that was supported by an outsourced provider. However, this offering did not cater for the entire business as many of the franchises relied on a rudimentary email forwarding system. Messages generated via the website were redirected to individual email accounts, such as Hotmail or AOL. This approach left the IT department unable to track messages if there was a problem with delivery or provide central virus and spam protection.

“Cobweb's efficient backup, anti-spam and anti-virus protection means I no longer have to deal with these issues and can concentrate on other IT projects.”

The Solution

Moving the entire business to a Lotus Domino server was not an option for Belvoir. Even though this approach would have achieved much-needed consistency within the organisation, a solution with more flexibility and additional features was required. Already happy to use an outsourced provider to handle its communications and messaging needs, Belvoir decided to source an entirely new, fully managed solution.

After visiting Cobweb's state-of-the-art data centres in London and Fareham, as well as meeting the support staff, Belvoir chose Cobweb's Microsoft Exchange Hosted service to meet its communications needs

As well as providing Belvoir offices and franchises with essential IT business tools, such as 24*7 access to email, diary and address books, Cobweb's Microsoft Exchange Hosted service facilitates document sharing and the dissemination of important business information.

“The solution had the flexibility we required and I was impressed with Cobweb's sound knowledge and professionalism.”

Public Folders set up by Belvoir are proving to be an invaluable resource to staff, as they can be accessed from any office throughout the UK. Now, instead of issuing an email when a new newspaper ad template is created, it is saved in a Public Folder and all staff can access it.This feature also allows discussion forums to take place between the different offices.

A total of 200 Belvoir staff currently use Cobweb's Microsoft Hosted Exchange solution. This is expected to increase to almost 500 mailboxes when all franchise staff are migrated to the service.

Cobweb's Microsoft Exchange Hosted service also supports mobile working allowing staff to access emails and key customer information when out of the office through mobile devices such as Windows Mobile powered SmartPhones and PDAs, Enterprise BlackBerry devices or any web browser.

Andrew Goddard, Head of IT at Belvoir Letting Agents says, “Our previous communications system was becoming increasingly hard to control so I opted to outsource the entire system to a new provider.The deciding factors in selecting Cobweb's Microsoft Exchange Hosted service were that it adhered to best practice principles, such as ISO9001 and ISO27001. The solution had the flexibility we required and I was impressed with Cobweb's sound knowledge and professionalism. From a technical perspective, Cobweb's efficient backup, anti-spam and anti-virus protection means I no longer have to deal with these issues and can concentrate on other IT projects.”

Michael Frisby, Business Development Director at Cobweb Solutions commented,“We are delighted to have met Belvoir's communications needs.We have provided the company with an efficient messaging and collaboration service with the ability to share information and best practice between its numerous lettings offices. Our Control Panel self-care portal allows Belvoir to add new users at any time and keep control of the common administration tasks. This means that as the company continues to grow and open new franchise operations, they will seamlessly benefit from our Microsoft Hosted Exchange service.”

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