Scunthorpe-based furniture manufacturer, Lebus Upholstery, has made a significant investment in its internal IT systems.
The move has been made to increase staff efficiency to manage recent growth, as well as preparing for the future.
Lebus provides furniture to some of the biggest names in the industry as well as hundreds of other independent retailers across the UK & Ireland, continuing to grow throughout the pandemic.
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Ethan Bettany, IT manager, had joined the business in March 2021 and knew that updating the IT infrastructure was going to be one of his first major jobs. Working with pan-Humber IT provider HBP Systems, Lebus carried out a full review before replacing all networking equipment, servers, and facilitating wifi across the 250,000 sq ft site.
“Like many businesses we were making do with what we had, but it wasn’t helping the business in any way, especially with the growth that we’ve experienced in recent years,” she said. “Staff were getting frustrated with a system that was becoming slow and unreliable, and if you leave things like that for too long then it can affect customer service throughout the business.
“I’d worked with HBP in the past, so I knew they were capable of doing everything we needed, so it was just a case of getting the ball rolling with them and providing an IT network that was capable of managing everything the business needs.”
Darren Jacklin, business development director at HBP Systems, was heavily involved in the project and praised Lebus’ approach.
“Ethan and his team completely understand what a good IT system can do for a business. It’s much more than just putting PCs on desks, it’s about protecting the business from threats as well as enabling staff to work quickly and efficiently, wherever they are.”
The IT system was completed in early 2022 and has provided an increased level of security, more robust backups and a faster system for staff to use.
“It’s been a busy few months at Lebus,” Ethan said, “but I’m delighted with the outcome of what we’ve done. Not only have we resolved the issues related to staff downtime that we experienced, we’ve also significantly enhanced our levels of cyber security, put in multiple levels of redundancy in the network to prevent it going down and, ultimately, made it easier for our staff to carry out their work from both in the office, and at home.
“The business is now in a much better place than when we started this project and I’m certain it will stand us in good stead for the future.”
