M DUERDEN LTD

Learn how M Duerden Ltd moved its data and applications to Citadel, including Opera, their line of business software.

Call our expert team on 0345 340 2120

WE STICK TO WHAT’S BEST FOR BUSINESS

M Duerden Ltd moves to Citadel Technology’s secure hosted platform

Located in Burnley in East Lancashire, M Duerden Ltd is a three generation family business and has been running since 1982.

As leading suppliers of flexible packaging materials such as bubble wrap and stretch plastic pallet wrap as well as manufactures/printers of self-adhesive packaging and bespoke labels for the industry. M Duerden works with a lot of businesses in the wholesale and distribution network.

M Duerden offers a high level of customer service, with the aim to provide exactly what the customer needs and ensuring that the provision of packaging materials is always on hand and customers never experience production downtime from “running out of packaging.” Their customers include some of the leading fashion outlets in the UK, therefore the careful and accurate management of their own stock and provisions is critical to maintaining this reliable and direct service.

M Duerden Ltd’s Caron Chattwood on the Move:

“Despite being ‘set in our ways’ as a fairly traditional family run business, we made the leap of faith into adopting a hosted solution and have greatly benefited from this decision.”

Caron Chattwood, the Financial Director at M Duerden, outlines how implementing their line of business software Pegasus Opera on a hosted digital workspace offers a secure, mobile and efficient system for the business.

“We have used Opera as our main line of business software for over 10 years. We use Opera for our stock and warehouse management and our financials and accounting. We have currently five users of the system, mainly in accounts and warehouse management.”

The decision for M Duerden to go with hosting their line of business software came after much consideration when the internal server was reaching end of life. The senior team had talked about it a number of occasions and discussed their objectives and concerns with Citadel and their Pegasus Opera partner, Synergy Technology, before making the final decision.

“We’d heard about the Cloud and hosted but never considered it to be an option for us. But after learning about the benefits of a Citadel’s secure digital workspace, requiring no internal hardware infrastructure nor the cost and resources to maintain an on-premise server, the choice to move to cloud seemed the right decision.”

“Our Opera users are all on one site but our print manager works in a completely separate unit which is much more efficient since adopting the Citadel solution because in the past we had all sorts of challenges to connect all our staff on the network.”

“It really offers great benefits – the peace of mind of the security aspects and the ability to work mobile both from home and other sites outside the head office. By simply paying for the service via a monthly licence fee for the number of users we have, we also know our outgoings and future investment going forward, there are no unexpected costs for server repair nor hardware maintenance.”

When a laptop went missing after a break in at M Duerden – the benefits of security came home – “it was so reassuring to know there was nothing stored on the lost laptop to jeopardise the security of the business – it was all on Citadel. We were quickly able to replace it and simply log onto Citadel via the new device and carry on working – no other preparation or set up was required.”

This reiterates the security benefits of a hosted solution. Citadel provides a secure hosted desktop for the team at M Duerden to access their line of business software Pegasus Opera as well as Microsoft Office (including Excel and Outlook for email). M Duerden simply pay a monthly subscription covering their licenses, support and hosted desktop. This can be scaled depending on the number of employees needing access to the platform.

“What people don’t realise is that there is a lot of downtime, lost time, when a server needs servicing or replacement. And there is still the requirement of data back up and restoration of data if required which all has to be done in-house. We don’t have a dedicated IT manager either and we truly benefit from the fact this is all managed by Citadel. We have the peace of mind it is all managed for us including scheduled out of hour’s maintenance that only goes to reassure us the Citadel platform is incredibly secure.”

The continual and growing threat of cyber-attacks, which often target by email and disguised in attachments such as invoice, statements and payment advice. Caron has the confidence that their system is monitored and can be isolated and managed the instant that they may think the system is breached, this is a great asset to working on a hosted workspace.

“As much as anyone tries to be totally vigilant about what email links and attachments to open, the Cyber Criminals always seem to be one step ahead of the game! We are very pleased with the service and support that we get from both Synergy Technology and Citadel and through their direction and professional guidance, we really do feel that moving to a hosted solution was the right decision for our business.”