Case study · Residential construction
Two IT providers, one bill, nobody accountable.
Stroud Homes depended on their IT to get through the day and were being overcharged for the privilege. Support was split between two companies, which in practice meant neither of them owned anything.
60%
cut from annual hardware costs
60%
cut from overall monthly expenditure
2 → 1
support providers, consolidated
~50
businesses in the franchise network
The cost figures are the ones published at the time of the original write-up and are per annum against what Stroud was spending before we came in.
The client
Fifty businesses, one brand, one shared set of headaches.
Stroud Homes is a franchise network of around fifty building companies. Each one is its own business with its own owner, its own staff and its own jobs on the ground — all trading under the same name, to the same standard, in front of the same customers.
That shape is genuinely awkward to support. The systems have to be consistent enough that the brand means something, and separate enough that one franchisee isn't looking at another's margins. Estimating, scheduling, billing, plans that everyone needs the current version of — all of it has to work across businesses that don't share a payroll.
When the technology has a bad week, it isn't one office that feels it.
The diagnosis
Split support isn't twice the cover. It's half the ownership.
Two IT companies were looking after different parts of the environment. On paper that's redundancy. In practice, every problem that sat near the boundary became a conversation about whose problem it was, and Stroud was the one holding the phone during that conversation.
The third complaint on their list is the one that mattered most, and it's the one businesses are most embarrassed to say out loud: they didn't know what good looked like. If nobody has ever explained what your systems should do, you can't tell whether you're being served badly or just expecting too much. That uncertainty is what keeps a bad arrangement going for years.
We came in on a referral, which is how almost all of our construction work arrives.
What we did
Take it over, simplify it, then make it cheaper.
In that order. Cutting cost first is how you end up with a cheaper version of the same mess.
-
Took the critical systems over outright
One provider, one number, one organisation responsible when something breaks. No more triage about whose scope it falls in.
-
Built a data model to simplify billing
Billing was where the complexity was showing up worst. We modelled the data properly so the process stopped depending on people remembering how it worked.
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Found and closed the data gaps
The unglamorous part. Information that should have been in one place and wasn't, or existed in two versions with no agreement on which was right.
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Upgraded the infrastructure and the hardware
Newer technology across the environment and faster machines for the people using them. This is also where a large chunk of the ongoing cost came out.
-
Centralised the core business functions
One hosted system with remote access, rather than core functions scattered across whatever had been bought that year.
-
Moved them onto managed IT services
A known monthly cost with the maintenance built in, instead of an invoice arriving every time something went wrong.
The outcome
What actually changed.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Support split across two separate companies, with unsatisfactory results | Ginko owns the critical systems and answers for them |
| High operational costs with no clear explanation | Hardware costs down 60 per cent per annum |
| Monthly spend that nobody could account for | Overall monthly expenditure down 60 per cent |
| Core business functions spread across a complicated setup | A hosted, simplified system that adapts as the business changes |
| Getting to your systems depended on where you were | Remote access to one centralised, stable system |
"Damian and his team at Ginko IT have looked after Stroud Homes IT system for a few years now. We appreciate their can-do attitude toward the work at hand, as well as their efforts to explain their work to us."
The second half of that is the part we're proudest of, and it's not the 60 per cent. "Efforts to explain their work to us" was complaint number three on the original list. Fixing the cost was the easy bit.
When this happened. The engagement dates from roughly 2018 and was written up in 2021. The relationship has continued since. We're not going to dress it up as last quarter's work — the specific technology choices would be different today, but the problem it solved is the one we get called about most.
Paying two providers and getting one result?
We will map what each of them is actually responsible for, what you are paying for twice, and what it would cost to put it under one roof. In writing, with no obligation.