Lakeside House, Quarry Lane, Chichester PO19 8NY

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CASE STUDY – Equine Hospital

Cutting Edge Unified Communications & ICT Systems for a Brand-New Equine Hospital

Approx. 70 users
State of the art, custom built equine hospital based in Ashington, West Sussex with a team of field-based remote staff.

www.sussexequinehospital.co.uk

The Client

Formerly the Arundel Equine Hospital, in 2017 the company moved to brand new, state of the art, purpose-built facilities allowing the company to further provide patients and clients with the best standards of equine veterinary health care. Pivotal the service and standards delivered is the IT Infrastructure and IT systems, which LMS Group designed from scratch as part of the design and build of the new hospital facilities.

Key Results

• Total overhaul of IT infrastructure and network design
• Office 365 Migration
• Out of hours IT support
• Robust backup and continuity solution utilised through Microsoft Azure to ensure business uptime
• Increased efficiencies with upgrades to the core network, computers, server and telephony
• Overall security improved with better controls & protection mechanisms

The Challenge

Sussex Equine Hospital were recommended to LMS Group in 2014 to help with a business transformation project which involved the migration of the central practice management system; part of this project required a complete ground upwards overhaul of computers, servers and networking. At the time the business was trading from their old Arundel premises, which presented challenges around both poor ADSL connectivity and network infrastructure.
Furthermore, it was known that the company was due to move to new premises and as such, any investment needed to be future ready for the new site.

An initial investigation also revealed that the IT systems were inadequately backed up, there was no anti-virus or anti-malware installed, and much of the hardware was outdated and at risk of becoming unsupportable.

Sussex Equine HQ

‘They overhauled our ancient systems in Arundel, and migrated us to Office 365. LMS have been instrumental in our move to our new site and completed all the works and specifications for the new hospital. They guided us to make the right decisions on software and also our new telecom systems. They are on hand 24/7 and are quick to respond to any queries or problems we may have. Thank you LMS for all your help.’



Tanya Bricker
Practice Manager 
Sussex Equine Hospital.

The LMS Group Approach

At the point of instruction LMS Group immediately put in place a temporary backup solution on the existing hardware and ordered a Security Appliance to replace the insufficient router. Not long after this was installed and before the new hardware had arrived the practice was hit with Ransomware; the temporary backup solution that was put in place and the advice of LMS Group immediately proved its worth.

Brand new servers, computers, networking, WiFi and a power regulation/backup solution were sourced for the project. Alongside the physical fundamentals, LMS Group migrated the business from an antiquated email system to Office 365. A phased approach was adopted to move services over to a virtualised Hyper-V solution with multiple points of redundancy.

Alongside the key IT milestones and delivery, LMS Group strategically took over the management of the companies ISDN phone lines so that the porting process to a Hosted IP Telephony with in-built unified communication capabilities could be managed in-house at the point of the company moving to their new premises.
LMS Group also managed the IT system design and installation for the new equine facilities in Ashington. This involved:
• Power Regulation, bypass power and UPS design
• Comms Room and cabinet design
• Management of OpenReach services into site (Fibre and also Copper)
• Design of data cabling (Fibre and also Copper)
• WiFi survey and system design
• PoE+ environment for Hosted IP Telephony, WiFi and CCTV
• Hosted IP Telephony system design and retention of existing out-of-area phone numbers

Having been involved in the project from a very early stage, LMS Group procured and managed the installation of a new dedicated Ethernet Leased Line for the site. Alongside connectivity, due to the remote location and expanse of the site, LMS Group installed site wide WiFi coverage using Cisco Meraki Access Points so that through the Hosted IP Telephony solution staff could be contactable wherever they are on the site.

Remote Access is also available for the remote workforce, so they can work remotely from the practice and still retain connectivity to key systems including the practice management system on tablets and smartphone devices.

The Outcome

Sussex Equine Hospital and LMS Group have been successfully working together over 5+ years. Throughout this successful period, we’ve completely re-designed the IT services and IT infrastructure from the grass roots. This has enabled Sussex Equine to scale its service provision, without dealing with costly IT downtime.

Special Projects

Over the course of our partnership, LMS Group has helped the Sussex Equine Hospital with the implementation and rollout of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security. This has enabled the company to tighten data controls within the business through:
• Enforced Multi-Factor Authentication and Single-Sign-On with Microsoft Azure Active Directory
• Mobile Application Management and the lockdown of external access to company data
• Enforced Bitlocker Encryption on remote devices which contain company data

We’ve helped to ensure that Sussex Equine Hospital has met project timescales and kept downtime to a minimum.

Contact us

To help your business thrive and to answer any questions about your technology needs, please contact us below.

Get in touch

Address:

LMS Group, Lakeside House, Quarry Ln,
Chichester PO19 8NY

ICO Registration Number: Z3394162.
Registered in England and Wales No: 7125975