Case Studies

In mid 2022 we began the search for a new IT support contractor following notification of the retirement of our long term IT support contractor.

From the start it was evident that Michel and LaneSystems understood our position as a Hospice and a Charity especially following the knock-on effect of COVID on our Charity income stream. The human side and ability to go the extra mile to facilitate us as a Charity and all without exceeding the agreed budget was met.

Michel and his team set out a plan to mitigate the risks in moving providers: visiting our Hospice, the Head office site and the outlying shops to understand first-hand the situation.

The support LaneSystems has given the Hospice has been second to none. Michel and his team have exceeded expectations and continue to offer a prompt and efficient service. Furthermore, Michel has kindly donated equipment to the Hospice and man hours, which we are extremely grateful for. We have now moved to a MS 365 system and will look to further developments including a move to Sharepoint data storage facilities.

Stuart Hodgkins
Estates & Facilities Manager,
St Teresa’s Hospice

We investigated several IT companies for advice, and management in maintaining our IT systems. Lanesystems was chosen due to the honest comprehensive and proposal supplied by Michel and the time he took to explain each aspect of the proposal.

The handover from our previous IT contractor was carried out smoothly during the period of December 2021 to Jan 2022. Since that time the service offered by LaneSystems has been very good and we have been impressed with their response times and the quality of service provided by their team.

Stuart Penny
High Force Research

I just wanted to drop you a quick line to say many many thanks to you and all your staff for the fantastic help and support that you have given to us over the last couple of months.

LaneSystems have played a crucial role in ensuring that we have been able to continue to provide advice and support to vulnerable people during the covid 19 pandemic- we quite simply could not have done it without you!

Whether it was the provision of loaned equipment, accessing more computers, people coming out to us to get things working or remote support- it has been there when we needed it.
Please pass on my thanks to all the team for their fantastic efforts in a period when I am sure you have all been under tremendous pressure.

We have been a client of LaneSystems for four years and throughout this time we have remained impressed with the level of service they have provided to us, their competitive rates offered and their understanding and willingness to cater for our every need in respect of IT support provision.

As an Advice Charity we have little internal IT knowledge or support and equally little resources to fund our requirements in full. In this respect, LaneSystems have supported us through donations of hardware and software and free or reduced labour costs, always developing a solution within our remit and budget to ensure best use of funding to support those in the local community who need our services.

However, the real measure of a company’s commitment and ability to provide solutions and support is not when things are running as expected, but when external events greatly impact on your service provision as with Covid-19.

LaneSystems were extremely pro-active in their response and made immediate contact to offer support and assistance. Like many agencies we have moved from a business model of 90% face to face activity, to 100% telephone, webchat and remote working. With the support and pro-active attitude to their customers, this transition took place virtually overnight allowing us to deliver our services as key Charitable workers in the overall nationwide response to the virus.

Hi Michel and Laura - hope this finds you both well?

I just wanted to say a big Thank You to everyone at Lanes for helping us all out with our IT. Tracy is delighted and very appreciative of all the work you have done.

I am personally very grateful to Callum in particular, for sorting out my VPN network! You have honestly enabled us to
keep our show on the road, and we are all very grateful!

Best wishes and thanks very much again.

Hi Michel and Mark,

I would like to offer my thanks and appreciation for all the work you and your staff have given us recently. You have been a critical element is our transition to working from home. Barring a couple of inevitable minor glitches, this has gone very smoothly and we are now all sorted. Lanes have played a blinder – thanks very much.

Mark

Director,
North Tyneside Citizens Advice

We at ‘Free the Way’ would firstly like to reserve special praise and thank Lanes System Ltd for their fantastic, 5 stars support they’ve offered our organisation. We’re a very small charity based in East County Durham and Lanes System Ltd were kind enough to firstly value the work we do within the community and secondly by offering us a package that was affordable. Like many small charities are impact is widespread, but we really run on shoestring. Lanes System Ltd not only took the time to visit our project but also assisted us by offering us recommissioned desktop PC’s free of charge and fitted them, set them up and offer us support in addition to this generous supply.

We at Free the Way, are delighted to be in partnership with Lane Systems Ltd, we couldn’t be happier with Mark, Laura and the team. We sincerely thank you for all your work, time and commitment to our service.

Sandra Goggins, Free the Way

Manager

Here at Lanesystems we manage a large accountancy firm consisting of 5 sites spread across the North East. The practice uses specialist, industry appropriate applications such as Sage line 50 / IRIS / Digita / Sage Payroll. Having approached Lanesystems in 2014 to assist in the re-design of infrastructure, we were tasked to facilitate the following:

• Redundancy
• Resilience
• Global security
• Site to site roaming

In this instance many of our competitors recommended using a Cloud Based platform to provide a centralised system to operate from. Unfortunately, the use of a central server which accommodates all users comes with its own risks:

• Broadband outage
• Remote application support by Key software suppliers
• Cost

For this accountancy firm, running a business consisting of 50 + employees dependent on one point of failure (Broadband) was simply not an option. Whilst there are many other solutions available including a lease line and dedicated circuit as an alternative carrier for the broadband, the SLA times are 1-4 hours to investigate but resolution can be significantly more.

Cost is an important consideration. Every business has to be sustainable and therefore understanding the costs associated with IT solutions over the years is crucial. Lanesystems constructed a strategic plan (vital for businesses of this size), based on a 3 year ownership to allow accurate budget forecasting. The plan focussed around Hybrid architecture utilising a cloud environment and in-house servers. This type of architecture allows users to continue using various applications in the event of a Broadband failure.

For this company we provided a fully managed environment from PC hardware to the support and liaison of other software manufacturers. As a company, we don’t believe in passing ownership of a problem but resolving it with minimal intervention of the users.

Recently a client approached LaneSystems to resolve a problem they had with working between the 2 sites. They had currently moved all their services to a cloud based environment which allowed Remote Desktop Connections to a central server within a Data Centre.

The 2 sites have 16 users in total. The industry they are in requires large data files to be accessed and stored centrally to be accessed through different user accounts and software packages.

While the solution they had in place allowed every user to access documents centrally unfortunately all users were having issues accessing the 3D modeling application data files. Running these programs on a Remote Desktop connection allowed very limited speed and functionality, rotational axis and rendering of 3D models proved difficult.

The other issue that they had was inconstant broadband reliability on both sites. LaneSystems provided a solution that was not dependent on the internet reliability, but allowed individual users data files to be accesses centrally but shared locally on each site. This increased the usability of the 3d modeling application yet provided a central data store for all documents. When files were being used, there were locked automatically and synced to both sites.

The solution provided resilience and redundancy with increased productivity on both sites including centrally managed user accounts. The capital outlay for this solution was considerable, but the long term financial advantage was justified within the first 3 months of implementation.