Case Study
Underground Power Development
~ UPD ~
Powering-On Through Isolation
Brad Ellett - Director - Underground Power Development
The frustration of IT systems that are not working well is far too familiar to all of us. The feeling that there must be a better way to work. We rarely pause to notice when our IT systems do simply work. No fuss, no switching between applications… that magic moment when we have managed to streamline our systems.
Many of us suffer through inefficient IT systems because the pain of change just seems too much (in both time and expense). But really, do we still need to? Surely by now someone has developed an affordable way of fixing things.
Local Perth company, Underground Power Development, were very much like that. Their success had become their IT burden. The company grew from a small start-up in 1996 and has flourished, expanding in scale and scope. As that expansion happened, ‘bits’ were added to each of their operating systems until they had ‘bits’ all over the place. Everything they needed to do could be done but it was cumbersome. Gathering all of those bits and streamlining their system seemed to be a huge task.
Then UPD were introduced to fellow local company, Agile Computing, and more specifically to their Instagile product – “Instagile” being a play on words for the instant nature of developing Agile solutions. Instagile was being touted as being able to take all of their ‘bits’, bring them together, then allow for UPD to make follow-up changes incrementally as they used the programme.
UPD have managed to grow their business and success through
astute business decisions and their decision to review the efficiency
of their existing IT was no different. Instagile was described as a
product that could migrate all of UPD’s business data from the
various styles, technologies and versions, including the third-party
software so integral to their services, and streamline everything
into a single, extendable application. Too good to be true?
Given that a solution was being offered with a free three-month
trial and very little time investment, UPD Director, Brad Ellett,
took the chance and was impressed and relieved by the results.
In the space of three months, the whole operation moved from
being clunky and frustrating to efficient and easy.
That rare moment of magic.
Moving forward another year, when we were all asked to operate remotely to slow the COVID curve and the team at UPD again experienced that IT moment of magic. With all of their business systems securely Cloud-based, the switch to remote operations was simple. While their peers were struggling with slow upload and download times to servers, UPD simply kept operating as normal, thriving throughout what could have been a disaster for the company.
UPD Senior Draftsperson, Robin Moran, says, “There is simply no way we could have coped with normal operations if we had not made the change through Instagile which has facilitated a paperless management system. Agile Computing have been marvellous in the changes they have made for us and the ongoing support they give us.”
Companies grow; times change; we all need to evolve. Instagile can take the tangle of systems that have gathered as your company has grown and bring them all together into one, integrated application. Then, as your company continues to change, that same application can be extended and maintained as Instagile gives you a fully customisable application with access to the code required for future development. The system is free to try, and can be installed locally on a network or securely hosted on Microsoft Azure Cloud servers. It is easy to use and works on any Windows computer.
Martin Lawrence, Principal of Agile Computing says, “Instagile is the business software that I have always wished was available”.