8th June 2020 | 4 min read

Time well spent

Radiocoms uses lockdown to prioritise system improvements

Radiocoms has been providing hire, sales, maintenance and managed services for voice, video and data communication systems and solutions for over 45 years. We spoke to the Operations Director Bhupinder Sidhu (Sid) about why Radiocoms decided now was the perfect time to finish their Sage X3 system upgrade project with Datel.

Seizing the moment

Sage X3 customer, Radiocoms, had been planning to move from version 6 to version 12 for about a year, starting the project and then deciding to place the project on hold after the initial stages of the implementation.

“As a company, we are busy all the time and maintaining our customer service standards is the priority. The software upgrade became secondary to the day-to-day trading.”

When the COVID-19 crisis hit the UK and impacted all industries, Sid saw the opportunity to restart the Sage project, “As business had slowed down, we decided to bite the bullet and get the upgrade completed now.” Sid explained that the impact of upgrading was a lot lower as resources can be easily redirected to the Sage project.

A smooth implementation process

Thanks to the Datel team, Sid felt that the implementation process went very smoothly. The two teams worked together remotely and utilised video conferencing tools to communicate throughout. The result was a fully completed upgrade, with all project related issues ironed out quickly and easily. “I appreciate that there will always be areas that may not work as expected or we will need some additional training on moving around the new system, but I was confident that the Datel project team and the support team were on hand to quickly deal with and resolve any snags and issues. By the second day, all minor issues were resolved.”

By moving his available resources and focusing on the upgrade project, Sid was able to slash the time it would normally have taken him and his implementations team to rollout this project. Both Radiocoms and Datel managed to complete the upgrade Go Live process in four days. 

Preparing for the future

As Radiocoms is considered as a ‘key worker company’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, a small number of staff remained at head office to ensure the delivery of its products to other industries also considered to be key workers. With only a minority of employees on furlough, Sid felt that the training element of the rollout could be staggered, with furloughed employees being trained as they return to work.

“The managers will become super-users and they will be in a stronger position to cascade training to members of their team as they return from furlough.”

Already, Sid and his team have seen the benefits of the latest version of Sage X3. With improved usability, adoption was really quick and the web client means there is no longer the need to configure the solution every time someone uses a different device.

“The look and feel of the new version are nice. The team is already saying we should have upgraded earlier!"