Crown Paints
With a proud history spanning almost 200 years, Crown Paints has a rich pedigree in decorative coatings, with leading brands across the Trade and Retail sectors including Crown, Sadolin, Sandtex, Macpherson and Berger.
With its headquarters in Darwen (Lancashire), Crown Paints has annual revenue in excess of £180 million across UK and Ireland (with a further small export business). Crown Paints employs 1,500 people and operates two factories in Darwen and Hull, with strategic warehouse depots located in Warrington, Dublin and Belfast. The business also has an extensive network of 126 Crown Decorator Centres (CDC's) across the UK and Ireland.
IT Infrastructure
Crown Paints were owned by Akzo Nobel, the largest global paints and coatings company. Akzo sold Crown Paints as part of its deal with the European Commission to secure clearance of its acquisition of ICI, which owns Dulux. As part of this sale Crown Paints had to carry out a full migration away from the Akzo Nobel supporting infrastructure.
The demerger from Akzo Nobel meant removal of SMS 2003 and migration to a new Active Directory Forest and Domain.
Challenges
There were a number of challenges that any asset and systems management product would need to overcome:
- More than 1000 computers across more than 130 sites
- 126 low bandwidth connections. Half on broadband modems and half on BT Metro VPN
- Remote workers that rarely connect to the corporate network
- Legacy local firewalls
The Solution
Crown Paints required a solution that:
- Would work across low bandwidth links
- Is simple to install and simple to use
- Did not require lots of expensive supporting infrastructure
- Required little or no training
- Would be scalable to meet their immediate and future needs
- Could easily be removed in the event of a demerger or acquisition
- Had full vendor support
- Could provide simple summaries of installed software for license compliance purposes
- Can be used for software deployment and patch management
- Can store license records and purchase information
Crown Paints had extensive experience of other market leading vendors of asset and systems management software. Certero and AssetStudio™ ticked all the boxes.
Nick Dutton, Crown Paints Service Desk Manager said "I first saw AssetStudio at the Service Desk and IT Support Show. We have used other market leading Asset and Systems Management tools in the past. The thing that impressed me most about AssetStudio was its simplicity. The intuitive web based user interface meant that we were up and running with just a few hours training."
"What sets Certero apart is their support. They assisted us through all aspects of the project to ensure we realised maximum value from our investment. Their application packaging service means we are able to remotely deploy previously problematic applications with ease. I would certainly recommend Certero and AssetStudio to any organisation looking to purchase or replace their Asset and Systems Management suite"
If you would like more information about AssetStudio™ then please contact us using the details at the top of this page or fill in our Online Enquiry Form.