Macbryde Homes

A KEY SERVICE PROVIDER

Macbryde Homes is an established property developer creating new homes across the North West of England, West Midlands and North Wales regions. Growth and sector challenges mean that working with a reliable, supportive print and IT partner is essential to enable focus on its core business.

Proactive IT Support

Macbryde Homes benefits from the proactive gold IT support package meaning that B2 IT specialists respond to their needs as if they were their own internal IT resource. “I would call B2 a key service provider,” confirms Kieran Power, Financial Controller at Macbryde, who explains why outsourcing works for Macbryde. “We don’t currently have the skill set for these tasks in house. And if we did, skills would be better served elsewhere in the business. It’s uneconomical to take on a full-time IT person, so B2 fits well with our current business requirements.”

Success has recently brought growth to the business, with outsourcing to B2’s IT support enabling scalability including preparation for new starters to enable swift onboarding without distracting Kieran from other critical tasks.

There’s also the unforeseen that B2’s IT support caters for. “There was an instance when we were broken into and hardware stolen. B2 were quick to have someone out with a temporary server to get us back up and running quickly – that was a real feather in your cap!”

Mindful of the dangers of data loss, Macbryde has more recently had a rethink of their business continuity approach and worked with B2 to put in place a platform for disaster recovery.

“When we need you, your response is quick and efficient.”

“In reality, you cannot stop an organised and concerted attack – hackers can cause major disruption under an organised attack. You need things in place to cover this eventuality and gain more comfort in knowing that we have a quick way of getting up and running without any concerns,” explains Kieran.

Macbryde has opted for a hybrid solution. An on premise appliance provides Macbryde with instant virtualisation in the event of a disaster, and also reconciles to two separate cloud based environments. Continuous analysis of meta data monitors for signs and symptoms of malicious activity such as ransomware or network compromise within their cyber estate.

“We’ve solved the concern over business continuity with a package that provides a belt and braces approach,” confirms Kieran. “Replication as we grow provides a form of insurance.”

Managed Print Service

B2 has also been a long-standing provider of managed print services with multi-function devices and plotters in Macbryde’s head office and developments across the regions in which they operate.

“The main problem with construction-based devices is the dusty environment and ensuring they’re kept in good working order,” explains Kieran. He finds he’s not troubled by issues with printers out on sites or within the head office. “By and large, the site teams book service calls without me needing to know about it. When we need you, your response is quick and efficient. Only this week there was an issue with the scanner leaving marks on documents. We put a request in, and your engineer was here within an hour and the problem solved.”