Stature PR is a London-based communications agency widely recognised for our expertise in producing creative, aspirational PR campaigns for clients in the lifestyle, fashion, hair, health and beauty, entertainment, sporting, travel and food and drink markets. We thrive on pushing creative boundaries, challenging established perceptions and using communications channels smartly to help establish and manage reputations for our clients.
We're a close, proactive team who enjoy working and creatively brainstorming together. That also extends into our relationship with our sister agency Atomik Research. As we work to the media's deadlines, we always need to be responsive. Fast access to data is vitally important and if we can't get to the information we need quickly, it's a big problem.
When Stature PR started operating a year ago, we were based with Atomik Research. Our growth was instantaneous and we soon found we needed additional office space and with that a complete technology refresh. Getting up and running fast without a massive financial outlay was critical, but we also couldn't compromise our ability to stay connected. The new technology needed to be reliable and agile to support our ongoing growth and be able to support the team of 14 across two office locations.
Our IT partner, Doherty Associates, persuaded us that buying new on-premise servers was a costly and time-intensive route to take. They recommended a hybrid environment made up of Office 365 for Midsize Businesses and their CloudTooR service which also wraps in an on-premise server to host line-of-business (LOB) applications and critical files, cloud backup, security and support.
Since going live we've had a very positive experience. It's tremendously reassuring to know we have the latest services, no depreciating kit and that if anything goes wrong, it's fixed quickly. There's just so much technology and functionality on offer with Office 365.
We're really enjoying the system and the more we use it the better our working life becomes, which is exciting for us individually and as a business. Lync in particular has made a big impact enabling us to chat and resolve queries quickly when we have an urgent request. Our email is also now exceptionally reliable – we've had no downtime - and we have much greater visibility of everyone's movements with shared calendars.
Shortly after going live with Office 365, however, we learned a valuable lesson about how critical technology can be for business survival.
Unexpectedly one day our broadband went down and we discovered that our service had been cancelled a week before the new one was scheduled to go live, with no immediate remedy. With an on-premise set-up that would have been disastrous; the business would have effectively ground to a halt which is the worst scenario in the PR and communications industry where meeting client expectations and media deadlines is the difference between success and failure.
However, thanks to Office 365 and the highly responsive support from Doherty Associates, we were able to send all our staff to work from home, where they could access their email uninterrupted. Their Office applications were streamed down to their home machines so they could continue to work on documents and content, and keep in close contact with one another using Lync for instant messaging, video and desktop sharing. We could not have foreseen how much Office 365 was going to help us maintain operations at that business-critical time. Our clients were completely unaware that we had suffered connectivity challenges; we continued to work at our normal pace and no deadlines were missed.
As a result, we've been able to make some subtle changes to the way we work. It's still very important for us as a team to have face-to-face contact, but Office 365 enables us to have our office anywhere – irrespective of location. We have the comfort of knowing that if someone needs to work from home or from somewhere else, it won't impact their working day and they'll be just as responsive and connected.
As we continue to grow, having the ability to work completely in unison is absolutely critical. Technology is changing on a daily basis and Office 365 reliably works and adapts. Without it we know there would be more daily IT issues to resolve, we wouldn't have the same quality of service day in day out, and we'd be held back by old machinery. We came so close to experiencing the crippling business impact of our systems failing us, but gladly any business continuity concerns are a thing of the past. Doherty Associates have been, and continue to be, an essential ingredient in the success of our new system. Their advice has been invaluable, their solutions first-class and they've consistently delivered when other companies simply wouldn't have.
We work in wide array of industries so the sky's the limit regarding the opportunities available to us and where we can expand the business. We're developing our services in a number of new areas including digital presence, events, broadcast and research which will be pivotal to providing our customers the widest possible coverage. Office 365 allows us to be proactive, always at the forefront and ahead of the game.
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