Providing independent business systems advice to arts & entertainment companies
Harrison Parrott
www.harrisonparrott.com
Background
The Company, based in London manage
artists and has a portfolio of over 70 internationally recognised,
conductors, instrumentalists and singers. The Company is also involved in
the organisation of tours for national and international orchestras. There
is also a public relations company specialising in promoting all sectors of
the Arts from classical music, ballet and opera to festivals, visual arts,
contemporary dance, jazz and world music.
Existing computer systems included a 40
user network spread across two buildings within close proximity, running
under the Novell network operating system and supporting a bespoke artist
management and scheduling system, ACT CRM, Sun Account ledgers, Microsoft
Office applications and internal and external e-mail. The nature of the
business means that artist managers travel extensively and therefore
require remote access via their laptop computers to the centralised system
to enquire on the various applications and pick up e-mail. The existing infrastructure had grown
with additional facilities and new communication requirements being added
on an ad-hoc basis, unfortunately these additional facilities had been
added without sufficient thought as to whether the basic infrastructure
could support the new requirements. There were many reliability problems
which were due to the relatively low specification of certain parts of the
basic network infrastructure and the increasing requirement of new
application software to run on high specification hardware.
IT strategy and infrastructure supplier selection.
Scale
2 offices in London and up to 16 remote users, 40+ staff, £3m+ turnover.
Scope of requirements
Artist management, scheduling, commission invoicing, contact management, office productivity, internal and external e-mail, Internet access.
Ageing infrastructure -
an upgraded infrastructure was required capable of supporting future
information technology requirements.
Simplified infrastructure
- the current infrastructure needed simplifying which would
rectify some of the network and communication problems being experienced. Improved communications-
the Company wanted to develop their use of IT especially in the area of
communications to better support remote working, access to the Internet,
fax from the desktop, plus other innovative IT applications. Old e-mail system -
the current e-mail system, Microsoft Mail needed replacement. Bespoke applications -
the main operational system was bespoke and in need of replacement. Internet access -
all users needed to be provided with Internet access.
An IT strategy was defined involving the implementation of an entirely new infrastructure. The requirements for the new infrastructure were documented and issued to a number of potential suppliers. The chosen supplier installed a new network and a virtual private network was implemented allowing users anywhere in the world to access the London based system via the Internet.
Microguide Corporate Computer Consultants, 82 Shortlands Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, KT2 6HE
Tel: 020 8549 7152
Fax: 020 8549 8112
Email:enquiry@microguide.co.uk
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