Dual effort gets Devon Contract Waste back to business

South West Communications Group and Matford Business Centre combined their efforts to help get Devon Contract Waste back at their desks the morning after their site was razed to the ground.

Around 100 firefighters were called in to the tackle a blaze at Devon Contract Waste in Marsh Barton Road late at night on March 1. The fire left the building a burnt-out wreck and demolition is set to be carried out.

Devon Contract Waste contacted swcomms at 7.30am to seek our help in re-directing their telephone lines, but ended up getting more than they expected in terms of a disaster recovery solution.

Finance director Harry Langley said: “As a group of companies, we also have four businesses centres at our disposal. We could offer the Devon Contract Waste’s administration team office space at the Matford Business Centre. The Matford Business Centre staff, along with ICT, service and engineering teams from swcomms provided and set up a new telephone system, plus four PCs and internet connectivity.  We were also able to provide training for the telephone system to our new occupants.”

Devon Contract Waste’s 16 administration staff moved into suitable office space within two hours of their call. All of their incoming calls were re-routed to their temporary premises and they were online by 10.30am.

Simon Almond, Devon Contract Waste managing director, said: “swcomms and the Matford staff were brilliant. Their swift action made a huge difference to us. When you are in the middle of a crisis, you need somewhere to organise yourself from and somewhere for your staff to work. Matford Business Centre is in the ideal location as our lorries are on the same estate. Although still early days and we have a long way to go, at least our customers can contact us a usual and we can continue to operate as a business.”

swcomms supplies disaster recovery (DR) solutions to a range of businesses, including standby disaster recovery suites in their business centres, call diverts, data backup and replication, offsite data storage and network redundancy.

Mr Langley said: “We were in the fortunate position of being able to offer immediate help to a local business and customer. Many companies do not plan for a disaster because they just hope it will not happen to them. When it does, it is imperative you have someone to turn to so you can get your business up and running as quickly as soon as possible to avoid suffering further financial losses.

“We would always recommend a DR retainer agreement with us because this gives a customer priority over other prospective occupants in the event of a disaster.”