Ikon Science Case Study

Ikon Science is an independent software creator and quantitative interpretation services provider specialising in the oil and gas business, primarily rock physics. The company develops solutions specifically for an industry in which the replacement of reserves must be achieved within ever more challenging exploration and production environments.

Company name: Ikon Science
Company site: http://www.ikonscience.com/
Product: Sage ACT!
Date: 27/11/09
Region: Middlesex
No Of Seats: 20

Situation:

Peter Wells is the Network Administrator at Ikon Science and he’s known DMC for some time now. “It was quite a while ago that we brought them in to install the original version of ACT!,” he explains, “and last month we upgraded to version 9. So because we’d always been very impressed with DMC and never had any problems, it made sense to bring them in again”.

The primary reason for upgrading was the need to integrate ACT! with a new version of Microsoft Outlook. “A lot of our users had upgraded to Office 2007”, he explains, “and they couldn’t use the mail feature that came with the old ACT! So we needed to upgrade so they could carry on using the email facility within ACT!”.

But it wasn’t just about integrating with Outlook. “The new ACT! has a stack of other new functionality as well,” he points out. “For example we use Sage Line 50 accounting software and the new version of ACT! enables us to integrate both solutions which has made our lives a lot easier.”

Solution:

However the upgrade to ACT! 9 was “a little bit more tricky than just installing a brand new piece of software”, Peter explains, emphasising this had nothing to do with ACT! or DMC. “We’d actually arranged to switch servers at the same time so things took a little longer. But really everything went quite seamlessly.”

The main upgrade “only took an hour” but then there was the problem of installing the client software “on each of the machines that run ACT!”, Peter continues.

“For instance we have an office up in Durham and an office in Houston in Texas. And then there were people from America and people from our Kuala Lumpur office having to download the software onto their PCs to make sure they had the current version. Our Perth office in Australia doesn’t have any administration software so we didn’t need to do it there, but with all the others it was a case of synchronising the switchover which was a bit of a challenge to say the least”.

But with DMC’s help it all went smoothly. “A great deal more smoothly than if we’d done it by ourselves!” says Peter.

The process was exacerbated by the different time zones “and having the right people online at the right time to do it”. Peter also explains that “on top of this, the less-than-adequate network links between the offices threatened to put a spanner in the works by slowing the process down to a snail’s pace”.

However DMC came up with a solution. As Peter explains, “It made sense to streamline everything in advance so we could simply upload the software onto the various servers ready for people to download locally rather than via slow network links.

“So DMC made sure we had the software in advance with sufficient time to copy it over and upload it. Then on the day because the software was already out there, all we had to do was produce a simple step by step instruction on how to install it - and off everybody went! Simple, really!”

Benefits:

Post upgrade, the new ACT! has been running smoothly and “everyone’s happy” and “finding they can do all sorts of things they couldn’t do before. Also, all those little things they used to be able to do but for a while couldn’t because of the Outlook issue, well that’s all working perfectly too”.

The next step for Ikon Science will be a “wider ranging intranet”. It’s still very much at drawing board stage and “the main thing will be to get that up and working first” Peter explains. “But once we do we’ll be looking at integrating it with either ACT! or another CRM solution. How we’ll do that hasn’t really been discussed yet. But ideally we’d need to be able to link into ACT! and pull out data as and when we need to. I imagine we’ll be on the phone to DMC again!”

In conclusion, Peter explains how he is “really impressed” they came across DMC. “It’s been quite a while now since we originally brought them in to install the old ACT! It was just by chance we found them. We always know that if we have any issues with anything, they’ll do their best to resolve them quickly. We are very happy with DMC and long may it continue!”