Situation

• BEL-FAST Printers, specialized envelope printing company, was running Microsoft® Exchange Server to provide remote workers with anywhere access to e-mail, as well as calendar and contact sharing
• The company managed and administered the application
• The costs of supporting it were outweighing any benefits.

Approach

• In consultation, the company's TELUS Account Executive recommended Microsoft® Exchange managed by TELUS
• BEL-FAST had already been considering a hosted solution
• TELUS offered the right solution at the right price

Business Benifits

• Immediate savings of over 25%, or over $30,000, per year in employee time previously spent managing the in-house solution
• Additional 15% in fixed cost savings on hardware, cabling, upgrades and maintenance
• Improved productivity from the addition of Microsoft® Sharepoint managed by TELUS
• The company has a greater level of confidence in its solutions, knowing they'll always be available

Solution Details

BEL-FAST Printers of Montreal specializes in the lithographic printing of standard and custom-manufactured envelopes. The company is driven by innovation and uses the latest in printing technology to ensure a quality product and greater efficiency. Its clients, which include several of North America's premiere companies, ad agencies and direct-marketers, are demanding and depend on BEL-FAST to deliver consistently. As a result, BEL-FAST employees must be able to respond quickly to client requests.

"We need an easy way to access e-mail and exchange services remotely because we have direct and indirect sales personnel who must be kept in the loop wherever they're scattered," says General Manager Keith Fisher. To provide that access, BEL-FAST had been running Microsoft® Exchange Server in-house. However, the application had begun to demand more bandwidth than BEL-FAST could cost-effectively support on its own. And the need to be operational 24x7 meant that BEL-FAST required levels of redundancy and Quality of Service that added significantly to their costs. The company began looking for a provider capable of hosting the service for them.

While searching for the right provider, BEL-FAST learned from their TELUS representative about Microsoft® Exchange managed by TELUS. After more than 8 years of using TELUS for its voice and fax services, BEL-FAST already had a high degree of confidence, so when TELUS offered what Fisher calls " a very attractive package in terms of cost" the decision was easy. "We knew we couldn't guarantee 24x7 uptime the way TELUS can, and we knew we couldn't do it for the same cost'" he says.

BEL-FAST switched to Microsoft® Exchange managed by TELUS towards the end of 2005. The company also chose Microsoft® Sharepoint managed by TELUS to enable easy document management and file sharing for its employees and clients via a secure Web portal. "It's been going superbly," says Fisher. "We haven't had a bump since we switched it on. It's given us an extended range of services, particularly for people who are working from home or out of the office."

Most import of all, the TELUS services have dramatically cut BEL-FAST's IT costs. Fisher estimates that on an annual basis, the company is saving 25%-30% just in the variable costs of time that employees used to spend managing the system. This translates into actual savings of $35,000-$40,000. Add to this the roughly 15% saved on the cost of hardware, cables and upgrades and Fisher says another $5,000 to $10,000 is freed up to be invested in the company's core business. "It's been very successful and it's one of the things I no longer have to worry about," he says. "For a company of our size, it's the most sensible thing to do."