Salamander

Salamander is one of the UK’s leading companies at the forefront of water-care product technology. Based in the West Midlands, they’re manufacturers and international distributors of items such as water softeners, de-scalers and purifiers.

With 18 staff both on-site and in the field working for customers worldwide, e-mail has become increasingly important to the company’s communications in 2001.

“It seems that e-mail has taken over from letters and faxes as far as we’re concerned,” said Tracey Harvey, Salamander’s Accounts Manager. “Whether it’s suppliers, customers or sales staff, we use it for virtually everything now. And it’s particularly essential when communicating abroad. It’s just so much faster.”

Salamander’s previous e-mail and internet access client was simply a piece of shareware downloaded from the internet, installed and left to its own devices. However, problems soon started occurring when their e-mail system began to break down regularly – nearly every day at one point. “We couldn’t get e-mail in or out,” recalled Harvey.

Looking to give internet access to certain machines, it was obvious their existing arrangement wasn’t up to the task. “It’s always the way of things, but you don’t know how much you rely on something until you haven’t got it,” she said.

So Salamander started looking around for a reliable, cost-effective solution which would give several workstations internet access simultaneously – without falling over every day. Among others, they got in touch with faithworks-i.t

Originally introduced to each other over 10 years ago by CA Software Systems, since then, Chris Baxter of faithworks-i.t has been steadily serving Salamander in several technical areas – in particular, successfully supplying, installing and maintaining a new, modular accounts management system which was upgraded from the old green-screen format to a windows environment. faithworks-i.t recommended the intY solution for its functionality, robustness and its supported, trouble-free maintenance.

Salamander hadn’t yet installed any anti-virus protection either, so with the volume of e-mail they were generating, this was a particularly attractive part of the intY solution’s appeal for them.

“Our MD did look at other solutions, but soon decided that what faithworks-i.t had to offer was much better.” Those other solutions included Qube and Microsoft Exchange.

As part of the selection process, Salamander's directors looked at facilities, control, flexibility and service. They were especially interested in the high level of control the intY solution gave them. For example, incoming and outgoing e-mail can be screened for swear words. Any mail containing banned words can be blocked from the system. The company can also edit their own web pages now in-house for publication on the net – something they couldn’t do before.

And as Salamander’s directors have always been happy with the service they get from faithworks-i.t, once they’d contacted the intY manufacturers and found them very responsive as well, the final decision was a formality.

Once commissioned, installation was straightforward using BT’s Business Highway high speed connection, so the intY solution was soon up and running, making the world of difference to Salamander’s previous on-line experience.

As Harvey herself testified; “I’ve got internet access on my machine here and speed of access is almost instantaneous. It’s all working very well for us.”