Case Study
@I_am_word_struck
Michelle Nicol, writer, Wordstruck writing and training Michelle is a copywriter, trainer and brand storyteller who helps businesses tell their story through words that attract attention. A former BBC journalist, she loves nosing out a great story and sharing her writing expertise through training and workshops.
FROM HELL TO HEAVEN:
How North Group’s journey to the cloud has improved business insight and budget control Pure cloud software continues to rapidly replace outdated on-premise and hosted applications. Gartner Research Vice President Milind Govekar, has said that as soon as 2019, at least a third of the largest software vendors will have moved from cloud-first to cloud-only. But that still leaves many businesses at risk of being held back because familiarity makes it seem easier to put up with old software applications or spreadsheet files rather than investing in new cloud systems. We speak to North Group about their experience of ditching on-premise and moving to the cloud...
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hen asked to describe what life was like before his business started using cloud software, John Carroll doesn’t mince his words. “The software was over complex, it wasn’t integrable. It was written specifically for us and it cost us a bomb.” North Group Consulting is a specialist infrastructure surveying company with offices in Brisbane, Gladstone, Gold Coast, Sunshine 100 / Issue 15
Coast and Weipa in Australia. Their surveyors and town planners specialise in high-end, technologybased projects including roads and hospitals, using sophisticated satellite and LIDAR technologies and Mobile Laser Scanning techniques. The high costs of on-premise technology North Group were paying around $2,000 AUD per month for a large
on-premise system to manage their accounts and job costing. This represented a large overhead for their business and wasn’t returning the level of reporting they needed. John likens accessing data with their previous on-premise technology to venturing into Harry Potter’s Chamber of Secrets, having to get past the small number of gatekeepers who understood how it worked: “Certain people knew some of the things that it could
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