ATPM are supporting tourist parks, increasing productivity and cutting costs with Office 365

“Working with a Microsoft partner, we have not just received a software product off the shelf, rather a complete solution that solves real business problems” – Jonathan Morris, ATPM.

ATPM provide services such as HR, Finance and Operations Management to the caravan park and resort industry. Operating since 1993, ATPM has grown from its first management contract of 7 holiday parks to currently managing over 30 parks and resorts throughout Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

We work closely with Jonathan Morris, the IT Operations Supervisor to support the IT requirements of ATPM’s managed parks around Australia.

“ATPM presented a unique opportunity for us as they were facing a number of IT problems across different areas of their business.” – Elliot Munro, GCIT

On-boarding and managing new Parks’ IT environments

At the time that ATPM found us on Microsoft PinPoint, they were managing 29 parks, each with varying hardware, software, internet and email configurations. Each time ATPM took over management of a new park, they were faced with the difficult task of deciphering and supporting their IT environments.

ATPM needed a solution to easily on-board new parks, without worrying about the IT systems they were inheriting.

Inconsistent and expensive licensing practices.

“We would use retail boxes of software and send them around to the different parks and it was difficult to keep track of whether we had the correct number of licences for the number of computers we had” – Daniel Tilton, then General Manager

ATPM’s method of providing software to it’s team members and managed parks needed an overhaul. Multiple versions of antivirus, Office programs and remote support agents were being rolled out. The methods and management of licensing were also inefficient and needed standardising.

Unreliable on-premise Exchange servers

In January 2013, ATPM suffered a malfunction to the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) unit that was attached to their Head Office Exchange Server. An Exchange server manages the email, contacts and calendars for all users in an organisation.

We were able to restart the server, though unfortunately, email operation for their 40 internal users was not restored after the restart. Our technician determined that the malfunctioning UPS had caused the mailbox store to become corrupted. Luckily, the midday backup had just completed and the technician was able to start a restore, however due to it’s size, the process took over four hours.

For an office with 40 team members, these types of outages were an unacceptable risk to the organisation. ATPM needed a way to reduce their reliance on on-premise infrastructure for email, contacts and calendars.

ATPM approached us in late 2013 with their problem and after consultations with then General Manager Daniel Tilton, we developed a six month IT consolidation strategy that featured Office 365 and Microsoft Intune.

“It was clear that there would be no single product or magic bullet that would solve all their challenges.” – Elliot Munro, GCIT

We needed a solution that would take care of the issues ATPM was currently facing with ageing on-premise servers and disparate IT systems, and position them to take on and support new parks without concern for their IT set up.

Standardise everything

We used Office 365’s Office ProPlus licenses to standardise Office to the latest version across all parks and used the built-in Windows licenses from Windows InTune to upgrade machines to the most up to date operating systems. Now, each ATPM managed park PC runs a standardised suite of software thanks to Microsoft InTune package deployment and is up to security spec thanks to the built in Windows Update deployment features and AV client.

Unlimited Support

We provided ATPM managed parks with unlimited remote IT support. For issues that require on-premise attention, we organise local IT help and manage the job remotely. We also coordinate support with service providers for park boom gates, internet providers, and phone systems.

Reporting and Security

Microsoft Intune secures, patches and reports on ATPMs managed hardware for all parks and head office. We use a single cloud-based dashboard to monitor and protect ATPM’s Australia-wide IT environment and deployed assets. Microsoft Intune also alerts us to issues before the users are aware they’re occurring, and allows us to resolve problems without interruption.

Office 365 for all

We’ve deployed Office 365 for the ATPM head office and all managed parks. Office 365 includes Exchange Online, which replaces the unreliable on-premise Exchange server for ATPM’s head office, removing the responsibility of maintaining the server internally.

“Exchange Online takes all the risk out of ATPM’s email operations.” Daniel Tilton, then General Manager.

Office 365 was also deployed to all the remote managed parks, giving these small businesses the same email, contact and calendar functionality of the ATPM head Office. By standardising all email systems on Office 365’s Exchange Online, we have a superior, consistent alternative to the myriad email systems that were previously in place.

Cost Saving

Our customised solution for ATPM has reduced the combined software expenditure for all parks by approximately $7,000 per year.

“We’ve saved over $500 per month across all our workstations on software costs alone, while at the same time increasing software functionality and the productivity of our staff.” –Daniel Tilton, then General Manager

We were able to achieve this saving by removing the confusing mix of subscription based software such as LogMeIn, TeamViewer, Norton 360, McAfee, Trend, Kaseya as well as the purchase of Windows and Office Professional for each new machine.

Reduced Support Incidents

The roll-out of Microsoft Intune has brought all managed PCs up-to-date and secured, resulting in a 30% decrease in malware related support tickets.

Standardising all software to ensure that everyone’s on the same modern platform has reduced end-user support tickets by 25%. Part of this is due to users being able to assist each other with IT questions as they discover the functionality of Office 365 and it’s included services.

Industry recognition

Our Office 365 and Intune solution for ATPM was recognised by Microsoft in 2014 with a nomination for the Microsoft Australia Partner Award for Small Business Partner of the Year.

Elliot Munro and Jonathan Morris were invited to present the solution to the Australian tech media during Microsoft’s announcement of Office 365 being delivered from Australian Data Centres in Sydney, December 2014.

The solution was also featured in a Microsoft press release, and showcased in an article on Computerworld. Read more about it below.

Microsoft Press Release on ATPM’s Solution

Computerworld Article on ATPM’s Solution