Badgemaster
Badgemaster
As the UK's leading and largest manufacturer of name badges the company provides a service to over 30,000 clients including many of the UK's leading retail, leisure, travel, hospitality and care businesses such as the NHS, TUI, Costa, Nando’s and many more.
Established in 1992, the business has evolved organically from its Nottinghamshire base and is proud of its heritage and of its Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen as Manufacturer of Staff Name Badges.
Joe Elkington - Network Services - Mason Infotech
Badgemaster's IT History
Mason Infotech initially provided a hosted voice service to Badgemaster in 2020 to replace an ageing Avaya telephone system that would have required substantial capital investment to upgrade. Further work was undertaken later in the year to help with security, with Mason Infotech being awarded the agreement for ICT support in March of 2021.
Badgemaster is heavily reliant on internet services for both new client orders and customer service. Large server infrastructure is maintained on-site for both storage and application software along with traditional desktop facilities for all users.
With large volumes of small, bespoke orders in production, ICT plays a critical role throughout the production and order fulfilment process.
The Challenge
The previous ICT support company had provided a major upgrade to server and desktop systems a number of years ago but as time passed, systems started to become disadvantaged and performance deteriorated.
Whilst not impacting the business directly in the short term, it became clear that further investment in IT infrastructure was required to maintain the accuracy and high standards expected from Badgemasters clients. The investment needed to be accompanied by stringent change management processes along with an agreed approach to maintaining data storage and integrity moving forward.
The Solution
Following the traditional onboarding procedure that we undertake with all clients, it was clear Badgemaster needed to address a few key areas with some priority. These were scheduled into an agreed development programme to improve facilities at desktop level whilst also ensuring data was correctly backed up and organised on the servers.
Key milestones included
- Migration to Office 365 from Exchange
- Use of Microsoft Cloud services for data storage/retrieval
- Integrated off-site secure backup solution
- Full server performance review and reconfiguration completed
- Internet back up service implemented
A substantial element of our support process is the ongoing dialogue between ourselves and our clients to make sure we align IT resources and development of IT services to help the business achieve its aims. This is of increased significance when the business does not wish to employ direct IT support itself.
Achievements
- A new Unified Communications platform to support office/home hybrid working.
- Improved Cyber Security with firewall, AD and M365 upgrades.
- Server Farm managed to improve the longevity of legacy hardware and licensing.
- 'Cloud' services deployed to improve business performance and agility.
- The offsite backup was provided for critical data.
- Backup internet services provided.
- Improved desktop services implemented.
Ian Bradbeer - Managing Director - Badgemaster
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