Careroom Nurseries
High-quality IT: from first steps to rapid growth.
'We want to focus on growing our business, but we rely heavily on IT for managing child and billing information. Doherty has designed and supported our entire IT system across 17 nurseries and head office. In addition, I now save at least five days a month in travelling and administration'
Sarah Owen, General Manager
- Key objectives
- Remote management
- Central network to link nurseries
- Stable and secure environment
- High quality IT support
- Doherty delivered
- Integration across existing systems
- Considerable time savings
- Improved productivity through faster connections
The Background
Careroom Ltd (who trade as Toad Hall Nurseries) is a Children’s full day care nursery group with ambitious plans. From three nurseries four years ago, the group currently has 17 nurseries and is continuing to expand rapidly throughout the Southeast of England.
Careroom's success is a direct result of the excellent reputation it has built with parents by offering the highest levels of quality and customer service. The company is always seeking ways to maintain these high standards. One of these areas is in technology.
The Challenge
As the company started to grow it had invested in some first stage computer technology. However, accessing and sharing valuable data was a problem. This was compounded by inconsistent back up and maintenance which led to increased virus attacks and ad-hoc support costs.
Data was stored locally, so the General Manager needed to conduct a monthly invoice run in person. Given the instability of the systems, this task could take up to half a day per site.
In 1999, Careroom reviewed their IT and decided that they needed to link all their nurseries to a central network and create a much more stable and secure business computing environment.
They also wanted e-mail facilities, shared file and print services, centralised backup and anti-virus facilities. They hoped that they could reduce on-going administration and support costs. After a referral from a business colleague, Careroom’s General Manager approached Doherty Associates to design a solution.