Frontier Adventure Racing
Frontier Adventure Racing surpasses their competitors with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003
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Company Overview
Frontier Adventure Racing is known for helping racers of various skill levels jump start into the outdoor adventure experience and reach the pinnacle of adventure racing. With offices in Ontario and Alberta, Frontier Adventure Racing plans and arranges numerous adventure races and courses across Canada each year. The races and courses that Frontier Adventure Racing provides are among the best in Canada, with each of their staff members having years of outdoor adventure and racing experience.
Business Challenge
The top concern for Frontier Adventure Racing is to provide their customers with good quality outdoor adventure experiences. Overall safety is paramount. Employees at Frontier Adventure Racing use the organization’s five desktop computers to book races and courses, record customer information, and collaborate with each other on various projects. However, as the existing IT infrastructure became outdated and overused, computer-related issues and problems began to interrupt crucial business interactions and interfere with employee productivity.
Originally, the company used a simple peer-to-peer network that limited access to critical data including medical information for race participants and communications within the organization. With offices in Toronto and Calgary, Frontier was looking for a system that would replace their Web-hosted email solution and provide greater access, better response and control over email communication to help drive the business. Also, Frontier Adventure Racing didn’t have a process in place to share electronic communications beyond their current Web-hosted mail.
Without extensive in-house technical support required to tackle its IT issues, Frontier Adventure Racing relied on third-parties to help solve many of its IT problems and keep the system up and running. Finding and getting that support, however, had always been costly for Frontier Adventure Racing.
“We operate in remote locations—and some locations would be impossible for service people to reach us,” says Rene Noel, IT Manager for Frontier Adventure Racing, of Frontier Adventure Racing. “Being so far out of the normal service region, many technical support companies could only be onsite for a few hours and had to diagnose and fix the situation within that time span. Just keeping the system functional had become extremely costly.”
As Frontier Adventure Racing hired new employees, it found growing its network to meet the needs of an expanding staff to be difficult. The in-house staff did not have the necessary technological expertise to add and support new users. Employee desktop computers were set up inconsistently, which resulted in only a few computers having access to all available network resources.
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Solution
With the help of Lanworks, a Microsoft Certified Partner, Frontier Adventure Racing implemented a solution based on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003.
Lanworks replaced the aging peer-to-peer network with a single server running Windows Small Business Server 2003, and Active Directory service. All five desktop computers at Frontier Adventure Racing were upgraded to Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional and Microsoft® Office System. To help protect the network and its assets, Lanworks set up the advanced firewall and automated back-up system included in Windows Small Business Server 2003.
“Within a matter of days, we had the entire system up and running,” says Jon Baker, Partnership Manager of Lanworks Inc. “The migration was seamless, and we never had to take the system offline or disrupt the flow of business.”
Group Policies were set up on the new Active Directory domain to standardize mandated workstation configurations that were previously managed manually. Roaming profiles allowed employees to log on to any workstation in the network and still have access to their personalized desktop, email, shared files and folders, and printers.
Using Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 technologies integrated within Windows Small Business Server 2003, Lanworks consolidated email domains onto a single server making it possible for Frontier Adventure Racing to handle its email through one central location.
Integrated remote access capabilities allow Frontier Adventure Racing employees access to email using Microsoft Outlook® Web Access and Microsoft Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration.
Remote Web Workplace helps Frontier Adventure Racing secure employees’ access to their workstations and the network. The Remote Access Support features in Windows Small Business Server 2003 make it possible for Frontier Adventure Racing to receive online, technical support.
“You could say we've been able to race pass our competitors with Microsoft software. It has helped solved key problems for us and revitalized the way we do business,” says Rene Noel.
Windows Small Business Server 2003 gives employees inter-office collaboration and file sharing capabilities with the integrated Windows® SharePoint™ Services that extend far beyond the previous experience. In addition to traditional file and print basics, staff can now enjoy an out-of-the-box Intranet solution providing a shared calendar feature that allows them to track work schedules and important race information from any desktop computer.
Business Benefits
For Frontier Adventure Racing, the benefits of updating their network to a more reliable system were immediately visible. “Windows Small Business Server 2003 has given Frontier Adventure Racing a stable, easy-to-manage environment that provides a solid base from which the company can effectively handle growth, and plan and implement exciting new outdoor adventure experiences for their customers,” says Rene Noel.
The Microsoft solution has enabled Frontier Adventure Racing to not only save money on infrastructure, but also to spend more time and resources on what drives their business: serving customers better.
Easy System Deployment
Lanworks discovered that development costs that had normally been associated with this type of implementation could be reduced. Previously, advanced reporting tools that allowed Lanworks to monitor system stability and integrity had to be custom scripted. Baker and his team were pleased to find that those tools now were included in the server operating system, which saved them a week’s worth of development time.
“We didn’t have to build any reporting tools. It was just a matter of turning on the existing tools in Windows Small Business Server 2003,” says Baker. “Without having to build those reporting tools by hand, we could focus on developing features that added real value to the solution.”
Decreased Administration Costs
Windows Small Business Server 2003 provided Frontier Adventure Racing with centralized and more efficient means to handle daily business needs effectively. All of their IT and core business needs could be met using one central server, without complicated hardware and software.
Task-based wizards allowed Frontier Adventure Racing staff to deal with complex and time-consuming system administration tasks, like adding and deleting users or performing system updates, instead of having to call upon outsourced technical support. By consolidating email domains to one centralized server, Frontier Adventure Racing had tighter control of corporate communication, saving the organization time and money.
“With our previous system, every time something would go wrong, we would have to call a third-party support company to fix our problem,” says Rene Noel. “And because of our rural and race locations, each visit was very costly, and technicians would have time only to fix the high-priority problems. With support now handled remotely and all email domains consolidated into one location, we have increased productivity by 30 per cent.”
Improved Access to Network Resources
By leveraging Windows Small Business Server 2003, Frontier Adventure Racing employees could access important information any place, any time, from any device by using features like the Remote Web Workplace and Outlook Web Access, which are all included in Windows Small Business Server 2003. This feature alone will save Frontier Adventure Racing time communicating between its headquarters in Oakville and wherever a race is taking place in Canada. Employees now use Windows SharePoint Services to stay up-to-date with races and share important information, such as racer’s medical history, more quickly and easily than before.
All workstations have Microsoft Office System, which allows access to the internal registration application with Microsoft Office Access 2003. Frontier Adventure Racing employees can create custom registration forms and race newsletters with Microsoft® Office Word 2003 that are sent on a regular basis to Frontier Adventure Racing customers using Word’s email merge feature and the Exchange Server technology in Windows Small Business Server 2003.
“When a system works correctly, and the need for complicated, hard-to-use system applications has been eliminated, employee morale improves greatly because they can concentrate on their passion, which is providing their customers with a great outdoor adventure experience,” says Rene Noel. “Because of the way our system now works, ensuring that all appropriate features are available to anyone logged on to the network, productivity and general workplace satisfactions have increased. We have been given the opportunity to concentrate on our business again—and feel confident our infrastructure can help support our long-term goals.”
A Foundation for Adding Valuable New Features
Frontier Adventure Racing can turn its attention towards the future—to new races and programs that will excite racers. “We now have the time to consider new features that were either not available to us before or too time consuming and costly to consider with our previous system,” says Rene Noel.
Future plans include an electronic customer check-in system that will allow the Frontier Adventure Racing guides to connect to the network using a PDA (or, perhaps, a Windows XP Tablet PC Edition) and a wireless connection. When this is implemented, Frontier Adventure Racing racers will be able to streamline the check-in process for expeditions by giving race organizers instant access to important customer information and required forms at the check-in point, which currently does not have any type of connection to the Frontier Adventure Racing network.
“As soon as a customer begins the check-in process for a race, we’ll be able to look up his or her name and find out if they have filled out the correct forms they need in order to participate in that race,” says Rene Noel. “This will save us a great deal of time and paperwork.”
Frontier Adventure Racing plans to use Windows Small Business Server 2003 as the backbone for all future system features and programs that will help improve worker productivity, allowing them to more efficiently run their business.
Windows Small Business Server 2003
Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 enables your small business to be more productive with fewer resources. Now you can: Automatically protect your business information in 15 essential ways; Get 20% more done every day by making it easier for your employees to find, share, communicate, and remotely access information; Reach more customers and serve them better, 24/7; Quickly set up and easily operate a Windows-based server to run your small business.
For more information about Windows Small Business Server 2003, please visit: www.microsoft.com/sbserver
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Lanworks Inc. products and services, call 905-212-1555 or visit the Web site at: www.lanworks.com
For more information about Frontier Adventure Racing Inc. products and services, call 416-783-4464 or visit the Web site at: www.far.on.ca
