Scunthorpe based furniture manufacturers, Lebus Upholstery, have made a significant investment in their internal IT systems in order to increase staff efficiency and manage their recent growth, as well as preparing for the future.
Lebus Upholstery provide furniture to some of the biggest names in the industry as well as hundreds of other independent retailers across the UK & Ireland, they have continued to grow their business throughout the pandemic despite the obvious challenges.
Time For Change
In early 2021 it was identified that a substantial change to the company’s IT infrastructure was required in order to help staff work more efficiently and to cope with the increase in business that Lebus were seeing.
As a result, Ethan Bettany, IT Manager at Lebus, 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 local IT provider, HBP Systems, Lebus Upholstery carried out a full review of their existing IT system before replacing all networking equipment, servers, and providing Wi-Fi across the 250,000sqft 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. 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 what 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 the way in which Lebus have approached their IT strategy.
“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 quick 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, of course, a faster system for staff to use.
“It’s been a busy few months at Lebus,” explained Ethan, “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.