Caffyns
In order to meet marketing, compliance, legal, and
additional operating requirements, Caffyns Dealership Group adopted
powerful solutions from Cobweb. “Cobweb took the time to understand
our business. When we first started using Cobweb hosted email, we
thought it was a temporary solution, but it’s now a critical part
of our communications capabilities” Christopher
Fullalove, Caffyns’ Director of IT.
Established in 1865, Caffyns’ current management are the
trustees of a legacy of excellence. The company was the first
automobile distribution organisation in the United Kingdom to
obtain an Austin Morris franchise.
Now entering its third Century of business, today Caffyns is one of
the leading car dealerships in the South East of England.
With 22 locations serving the automotive needs of thousands of
customers daily, and representing world-renowned automobile Marques
including Audi, VW, Land Rover, and Volvo, the company’s vision of
excellence continues at the core of its strategy.
The Challenge
Christopher
Fullalove, Caffyns’ Director of IT, recognised the benefits of
embracing new communications technologies including email. However,
as the organisation adopted this new technology, he also recognised
that he required an email solution that was much more flexible,
robust, and cost-effective.
“Over the past 10 years or so, and like many companies, we have
embraced email as a method of supporting the communications
requirements for a wide range of company departments including
marketing, finance, sales & after sales services, and HR,”
Fullalove explains.
“We initially started off with a very basic email system based
on POP3 technology. But as our email requirements grew, I realised
that we had to manage that growth.”
“We are a PLC, and subsequently face a great many constraints
and fiduciary requirements. Email communications have become
legally binding.
Due to Caffyns’ growing use of email, Fullalove recognised that
the company needed to change its legacy solution.
Caffyns required not only a cost-effective email platform that
was more flexible, but also a solution that would allow seamless
archiving of critical email documents, cost-effectively.
“We either had to employ someone fulltime to manage our
traditional email systems, or look to outsource,” Fullalove states.
“We started to look at hosted email technologies because we had
learned that these could be highly cost-effective, as well as
infinitely more flexible and reliable.
We examined and piloted the hosted email exchange services from
several companies. However, we discovered that data conversion was
a great inconvenience and didn’t meet our needs. Then we talked to
Cobweb. That was five years ago. We have been with them ever
since.”
The Solution
Today, Caffyns’ email capabilities are powered by Cobweb Hosted
Exchange services. This business-class email messaging and
collaboration capability – expedited with robust and secure
Internet technologies – enables Caffyns’ personnel to access email
and other critical data including calendars, notes, and similar, on
a 24/7 basis from anywhere in the world.
This flexible Cobweb solution also provides exceptional
cost-effectiveness.
“We have a contract with Cobweb for 500 seats on their Hosted
Exchange solution,” Fullalove explains. “The web version of this
solution enables us to access Microsoft Office Outlook at and away
from the business.
While other solutions such as Google might seem to offer similar
capabilities, they are nowhere near as effective as Cobweb. In
addition to productivity and efficiency increases – which have
resulted in significant savings – we find that Cobweb Hosted
Exchange is exceptionally cost-effective. So much so that we can
allow email access to the majority of our personnel.”
“Cost-effectiveness is also achieved through Cobweb’s back-end
administration technologies. For instance, we can easily remove
email accounts for those who may have left the company.
We have been allocated a set amount of Gigabytes that we can use
as we see fit, spreading that allocation to heavy users. This is
really useful in that we don’t waste allocation on staff that
doesn’t need it.”
Fullalove also
appreciates the high levels of security that the Cobweb Hosted
Exchange solution offers to his company. “We can easily access a
report that shows us the amount of phishing and virus attacks. I
need to emphasise that not one of these attacks has been
successful.
Cobweb’s solution is very secure, and that reinforces our
confidence in this system.”
Additionally, Fullalove notes that Caffyns’ staff save significant
time due to Cobweb’s Anti-Spam services. “Spam is absent from our
emails. Cobweb is very proactive at removing spam, and this leaves
our users to concentrate on genuine correspondence. ”
Cobweb’s Message Archiver solution has been integrated into
Caffyns’ Hosted Exchange email solution to help meet a variety of
compliance requirements.
“Half the reason we went with Cobweb is due to its exceptional
email archiving solution,” Fullalove notes.
“We needed something robust for legal and tax reasons. With
Cobweb’s Message Archiver solution, we have the confidence of
knowing that all of our email communications are automatically and
securely archived.”
Cobweb’s Message Archiver automatically flags, compresses, and
archives all email documents, thereby providing a complete
messaging history. Stored in Cobweb’s secure data storage
infrastructure, archiving frequencies are managed by users to meet
exact requirements.
“Message Archiver’s back-end allows users to configure archiving
to meet their unique requirements,” Fullalove explains. “For
instance, you can archive a message immediately after it is sent or
received, or at any frequency you wish.”
Message Archiver provides Caffyns the security and confidence of
knowing that complete message histories are instantly
available.
“Historic email documents, including any attachments, are
available to us over the web and when needed,” Fullalove
says.
“We can search by a variety of tags including to/from,
recipient, attachment, and even through a textual search. This
means that we can quickly locate any email message – or strings of
messages – that we may require to meet legal, tax, and compliance
issues and queries. As a PLC, this is critical.
“Recent legislation has changed our compliance requirements. We
now have a powerful tool to help us locate relevant email
documents, should we need to.”
Fullalove strongly recommends Cobweb’s Hosted Exchange and
Message Archiver solutions. “Hosted Exchange is highly flexible. It
increases our productivity and efficiency.
It is extremely cost-effective because it allows us to switch
users on and off instantly. Message Archiver is robust and
accurate. It ensures that we are able to keep – and manage – all
email histories in one location.”
“Would I recommend Cobweb Solutions? The answer to that question
is that I already have, and will continue to do so.
Caffyns now uses Cobweb solutions to drive many critical areas
of communications, including sales and marketing. “We recently had
a review with Cobweb, and intend to add a lot more value to our
marketing using their solutions,” Fullalove states.
“Communications on Cobweb infrastructure and solutions will help
to motivate customer loyalty, and expand profitability and
revenues.
“Cobweb took the time to understand our business. When we first
started using Cobweb, we thought it was a temporary solution, but
it’s now a critical part of our communications capabilities.
Without doubt, Cobweb has provided us with an exceptional hosted
exchange and archiving solution that helps our company meet its
objectives.”
Contact Us Download
the PDF