Case Studies

Local support equals success for Multihire-RSVP Marquee, Event & Party Specialists

Bruce Smith is a joint-owner of Multihire in Capalaba, Queensland. He recently took time to share his thoughts on the successful working relationship he has with Ian Dudley in Alert's Australia office.

Bruce relies on Ian's expertise to support his Alert system on a daily basis as well as to assist in larger projects, including a recent upgrade of his wide-area network.

Alert: First, can you tell us a bit about the local support Alert provides in Australia?

Bruce: I believe that good support means you can just pick up the phone and ask a quick question. Access to quick solutions has been a benefit of having an Alert staff member in Australia to support us.

I'm quite happy with the support situation . I can either ring Ian up or email him and describe my question or problem. If he needs clarification he rings me back and then answers my question; it works well.

What are the typical kinds of questions or problems do you have when you call for help?

I can't honestly remember seeing an error message or a situation where we've had to shut down the system for the sake of maintaining it. Mainly it's fine-tuning the system so we can get the information we need. Ian has customized several reports for us. we tell him how we want to change the information on a report and he does a quick shoe-shuffle and the report comes out the way we want it.

Does Alert ever need to come on-site to support your system?

Ian can support us mostly through the phone and email. He's been down here perhaps two times in the last year. He's a nice bloke and I don't mind having a cup of tea with him but I don't really need to see him every week!

Recently Alert helped you to convert your wide-area network from ISDN lines to DSL service. Can you tell us about this project?

ISDN private lining is very expensive. over four times the cost of the new DSL lines we recently upgraded to. There was an initial investment of hardware to make the switch, but we figure that within the first year of switching, the cost savings of the DSL versus ISDN lines will pay for the hardware upgrades required to make the change.

The project was complicated. We had to work with Telstra to get the DSL service installed, Cisco provided the routers, and we also had local hardware people involved. Ian acted as the middle man, organizing the upgrade and making sure everything worked. We were one of the first businesses that installed this kind of network in this area, so there were inevitable delays at some points in the process. But Ian was very good. I was quite happy with the way things progressed and we're happy with the new setup.

Would you recommend Alert to other hire companies?

Of course, yes. The software is easy to use, and if there are any changes we need made or problems, they're easily fixed and changed.