New Zealand company Inspire Group develops learning media that helps businesses to train and grow their people. It offers custom learning solutions with a focus on creating engaging blended-learning experiences, leadership development programmes and off-the-shelf learning modules.
The company serves a diverse clientele across industries such as banking, telecommunications, government and the not-for-profit sector, and counts among its customers organisations such as ANZ, NZ Customs, TradeMe and Fulton Hogan. With around 40 staff in four offices, Inspire Group employs a team of learning designers, developers, visual designers, coaches and facilitators.
As companies and government agencies look for ways to boost the skills and productivity of their teams, learning and leadership development have become an increasingly critical focus.
“We started in Wellington as a one-man band in 2001,” says Chrissy Webb, Inspire Group’s finance manager. “In 2012, we opened an office in Auckland, followed by one in Melbourne and then our Kuala Lumpur office about six years ago.”
As the team grew, so did Inspire Group’s technology needs and Datacom has been there to support the team since 2015. Datacom Service Delivery Manager Annelise Quirk has worked closely with the Inspire team for years and says the two organisations have formed a strong relationship with high levels of trust.
“We’ve established a very good, long-term relationship built on trust, so they value our advice and are willing to implement our recommendations.”
The relationship exemplifies what Datacom is able to offer small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by providing tailored, flexible technology solutions that drive efficiency and reduce complexity and risk for businesses.
Mitigating risk became a priority for Inspire Group in the wake of the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. Realising the vulnerability of its physical servers prompted the company to upgrade to a cloud-based solution.
“The Kaikoura earthquake was the shakeup we needed to move to SharePoint,” says Webb. “We had a large rack of dedicated servers in our Wellington office and, while the connections were still live and nothing was damaged, we couldn’t access the building. It forced us to consider what might have happened if our servers had been damaged.”
Datacom worked with Inspire Group to migrate its email and file-server data to SharePoint and train users on the new system. The final part of Inspire Group’s cloud journey was to migrate authentication services to the cloud. Datacom engineers were dispatched to the Auckland, Wellington and Melbourne offices to complete the migration.
Less than four years later, when the global pandemic hit, that decision to move to SharePoint made navigating lockdowns and remote working so much easier, says Webb.
“The staff just took whatever they needed to work on and continued at home,” she says. “They were ready to go, and it was pretty much BAU. We had three new people start during Covid so Datacom did their setups, which worked well.”
In addition to Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Microsoft Azure, Inspire Group’s staff use a number of different applications including Storyline graphic design software for the learning modules, some Adobe products and Cyberduck for publishing and sharing modules remotely with clients.
Webb meets with the Datacom team each month but is in touch with them weekly and sometimes on a daily basis with minor questions.
“At this point, the Datacom team feels like an extension of the Inspire team.”
“It’s very reassuring to have hands-on tech support from people that know our company. Datacom knows how our business operates and what we need, and the advice they give is very relevant. They’re not trying to sell me a Rolls Royce when I just need a Mini. If there’s a problem, I don’t have to explain everything. They just make it so easy. I constantly get praised for having an efficient office, which is made possible by the support from Datacom.”
