Background
Crown Golf is the largest owner and operator of golf clubs in Europe with 57 golf courses in 33 locations, incorporating 7,000 acres with 27,000 members and 1,500 employees. All of its clubs offer modern, well-appointed facilities in tranquil surroundings.
Named Golf Group of the Year 2007, the company prides itself on customer service and innovation. Crown Golf always aims to provide an outstanding golf experience for its members and visitors, tailor-made to suit the lifestyles and needs of a wide range of golfers.
Challenge
Acquiring American Golf UK in December 2004, Crown Golf required a common platform which was capable of supporting the needs of the newly converged business without compromising its performance.
David Shepherd, IT manager at Crown Golf explained: “Our business tripled in size overnight as a result of the acquisition and so it goes without saying that we had to take a close look at the various systems in place and re-evaluate our needs. Having one central system which would offer maximum efficiency was vital to us”.
Crown Golf has an ongoing expansion plan – its strategy is to open at least two further sites in the UK per year. As a result, the company needed a flexible, resilient and accessible solution which was fully scalable. Increasing connectivity between all the company’s sites and its Berkshire head quarters was a priority.
“The systems that were in place were simply not efficient enough to cope with the changing needs of the business,” said David. “For example, some sites were using ISDN, others dial-up, which was causing reliability and performance issues.”
Crown’s ever expanding number of employees was also exacerbating the thorny issue of email security. The company’s number of users had grown from 100 to 250 users in less than one year. The latest anti-virus and spam filtering technology was required in order to keep pace and ensure the network was fully protected.
Solution
Opal seamlessly migrated Crown Golf’s existing ADSL connections and upgraded them to provide greater performance and increased speed. Connecting all of the sites and head office to allow for multi-site communications, not only gave Crown Golf more resilience and flexibility, but also made optimal use of the connectivity.
To ensure email security, Crown Golf chose MailController, the latest internet-level email filtering system from Opal. With the ability to define its exact requirements through MailController’s online portal, the solution was implemented immediately with impressive results. Reducing spam alone has resulted in more efficient use of the network for business critical data.
The company has a dual solution in place for all connections which guarantees uninterrupted internet access - a feature essential to a busy 24/7 leisure business like Crown Golf. Monitoring systems are in place that alert Opal and Crown Golf engineers should a DSL service fail.
“Opal succeeded in delivering us with an exacting solution which met our needs. We have gained a scalable architecture to accommodate for the future growth of our business. Being the experts that they are, the Opal team helps to make my job that little bit easier,” added David.
He continued: “We now have consolidated, centralised business systems which are easy and quick to access from any site. Facilitating the smooth running of the business, the Opal solution enables the IT department to monitor all sites and can accommodate new sites at extremely short notice.” David concluded, “Opal manages and supports all of our hardware which is one less headache for our very busy IT department.”
