Harcourts Gold relies heavily on technology and connectivity for their largely mobile team of estate agents. As the business has grown, one of the primary issues identified was the lack of strategic technology planning by the incumbent IT provider. The deployment of technology without consideration of the wider business lead to a number of ongoing business impacting issues being experienced.
Harcourts is the largest Real Estate Company in New Zealand with a trusted history dating back to 1888.
Harcourts Gold Real Estate is proudly owned and operated by John and Lynette McFadden and Cameron Bailey.
The business consists of five residential real estate offices and a property management company in Christchurch.
In consultation with the Harcourts Gold, Intellium developed a Technology Roadmap that provided a detailed course of action for technology across the wider business. This included both servers and desktop deployment and support, as well as, the telecommunications across the 5 sites. The solution included:
- Building a new virtualised server platform.
- Standardisation of both desktop / laptop environments.
- Moving all email from multiple servers & office 365 to a new Microsoft Exchange Server. One location for all email with improved collaboration i.e. real-time invites to meetings; booking of meeting rooms and resources; single consistent global address book.
- Installing the new "GoldNet" network – a single network & domain where all users across all branches connect to the same resources by a single login regardless of branch.
- Creating a secure and consistent access from mobile devices to GoldNet services (email, remote file access, and printing) – Connection profiles are the same for all users.
- Implementing a centrally managed virus and malware management policy and platform for all GoldNet connected devices
- Building a private network connecting all 5 sites with secure access to the internet and unlimited data for a fixed price.
- The private network (Wide Area Network) is now proactively monitored and managed for quality of service and availability.
- Implementing a centrally managed support platform – IntelliumCare for the support of all agents and staff for a fixed price.
- Fixed price, unlimited Server & Desktop support
- Fixed price, unlimited internet access – shared by all 5 offices including failover
- Server hosting – Data Centre colocation
- Network & Internet capacity upgrades enabling offsite backup & Server replication
