Gipping makes big savings moving to Teams

Based in East Anglia, Gipping occupational health and wellbeing provides a range of workforce health services to businesses throughout East Anglia and London. From hearing tests and health surveillance to management referrals and training, Gipping provides on-site services that requires colleagues to work from multiple locations.

"We have been cloud-based for a while using virtual servers to replicate the environment you find in a traditional networked office," explains Mark Braithwaite, Managing Director at Gipping. "We realised this was an increasingly expensive solution and searched for alternatives when our previous IT company seemed unable to help."

Microsoft Teams made impressive savings
Drawn to Strident's Microsoft Gold Partner and ISO 27001 certifications, Mark was confident we could deliver a solution. "Of the potential suppliers I spoke with, only Strident suggested moving to Microsoft Teams to handle our file storage."

Mark admits they were initially sceptical because the cost savings seemed too good to be true. "Chris at Strident arranged for us to speak to a few clients who had already made the move. The savings have proved to be real."

Easy to keep in touch
In a world where videoconferencing is the norm, Mark remarks he and his colleagues have found Teams video easy to use and more stable than other services.  In addition, Mark says the business has found the new document sharing on Teams much better than before.

"It's very beneficial to be able to share and update documents in the way that Teams offers; everyone can see and update the same document so that everyone who needs to see it is always looking at the correct latest version. It took us a little while to familiarise but, once you get your head around the Teams concept, it works well.

"There are some downsides to the way you have to manage documents but for us the positives far outweigh the negatives."

Better office communication
"More and more customers are seeing the benefits of flexible working while staying productive and secure," says Chris Joberns, Managing Director at Strident.

"Sharing files, messaging colleagues and calling customers can all be done in one place with Microsoft Teams. It can replace your phone system and, with call routing as well as full conference calling capabilities, it allows you to work as a team even when separated," adds Chris.