APM Internet case study
Established in 2003, APM Internet has built a successful niche providing fax-to-email and email-to-fax solutions, as well as email packages with leading edge spam, virus filtering, hosting and archiving solutions.
Providing these services to a range of customers, the company uses broadband extensively. The benefits of a good broadband service to companies like APM Internet are becoming well known, but what about the individual influence on employees?
Iain Ogilvie, Marketing Manager for APM Internet, explains how the service provided by broadband provider Nildram has personally made a difference to him.
"Broadband has become a more and more essential part of my life and my livelihood," he explains. "Living in a rural community in the Cotswolds, my round trip commute to the APM Internet office in Tring, Hertfordshire, is easily over 100 miles.
"So having a home office with a fast and stable Internet connection enables me to work from home at least two days a week in an environment which mirrors the office technically but also provides other benefits."
Working from home at least 10 days each month, what this means for Iain is a travel saving of around 1,000 miles. To put it another way, this is 12,000 miles a year which would otherwise be spent in the car. As well as being more productive and enabling him to see more of his family and friends outside of work, the non-commute means that Iain is reducing his personal carbon footprint whilst also saving him the costs associated with travel.
"The benefits of avoiding a commute of this type are pretty obvious," adds Iain, "but these are only possible if you can enjoy the broadband speeds that you get in the office and the service is as reliable. What I wouldn't be able to do is operate with a slow connection and one that is constantly giving me problems. I have to have access to business applications that enable me to do my job."
The particular broadband service which enables Iain to run his working life more flexibly is provided by Nildram, one of the UK's leading and award-winning broadband service providers.
The company's extensive portfolio of broadband services not only delivers high-end solutions to companies, but also what it describes as 'business strength' services to consumers. In this respect, Iain sees himself as a double beneficiary.
"I selected Nildram because it had first hand experience of their services and their overall company ethos, which is about innovation and good customer service," explains Iain. "Running a business like ours, performance and reliability are utterly key, which is why I chose Nildram above others.
"As an added benefit, working from home using Nildram Broadband enables me to 'dog food' our APM Internet email services, so I use our anti-virus, anti-spam and MessageBunker archiving services on a daily basis - and share calendaring through our APM Zimbra email hosting and collaboration suite."
Away from APM Internet, the home office connection also enables Iain to undertake his own freelance marketing consultancy work for clients such as iLearntoPlay.com. This personal, flexible set up means that he is able to draw upon an additional income.
"Being a marketing professional, the nature of my job means that I am frequently moving large files around the net via email and FTP. And I am frequently video conferencing via iChat on my MacBook. Supporting all of this, the Nildram service has generally been rock solid and I'm experiencing speeds of 6.5 Mbps on average out here in the Cotswolds, which is excellent."
Iain is also complimentary of Nildram's customer support service; not that he has had much call for it. "On the very rare occasions I've needed direct customer support, the level of service has been excellent: friendly, helpful, and talking a language I was very comfortable with," says Iain. "They also seem to be able to establish very quickly the right level of technical understanding that a customer has. And the call-back service is great if the lines are busy."
In summary, the benefits are that he can work more flexibly, reduce his business and personal costs, and on top of this enjoy an additional income because of the features of broadband provided by Nildram.