National Small Business Chamber boosts productivity with Microsoft

Few structures appreciate the importance of entrepreneurship more keenly than the National Small Business Chamber (NSBC). Founded by Chief Executive Officer, Mike Anderson, this organisation is focused on promoting the interests of SMEs in South Africa.

With over 50 000 clients nationally, the NSBC is the largest South African forum available to local business owners. Offering free and paid memberships that are accompanied by direct operational support, networking opportunities and annual publications, this group aims to equip emerging entities with the resources required to survive and thrive.

Naturally, swift and effective communication is essential to the NSBC's continued success as a supportive platform.

This demands access to reliable technology services. As such, the group relies heavily on technologies such as e-mail, telephone, file sharing and instant messaging to interact with its members, partners and providers on a daily basis.

In 2012, the NSBC began to encounter several obstacles within its technical infrastructure.

Consistent email services had become unpredictable due to an ageing on premise solution. Furthermore, the absence of a certified archiving tool required staff members to manually back up formal communication and important documents.

As a recognised business partner, the NSBC turned to Microsoft South Africa for assistance.

Shortly thereafter technology solutions provider, Forrest Technologies, moved the NSBC's corporate infrastructure over to Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3 - an off premise business platform that gives users access to Microsoft's full Office suite and a consistent experience on both desk-based and mobile devices.

To date the NSBC has enjoyed several benefits as a result of migrating its legacy on premise business tools to Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3.

According to Twan'e Gouws, Head of National Sales and Operations at the NSBC, the platform has revolutionised the way this entity communicates on a daily basis.

"With Microsoft Office 365 everything is in the cloud, which is great. We now have unlimited email storage space - which was a constant internal challenge at the NSBC, the solution automatically backs up our information to a remote location and we also have access to eDiscovery tools - which certainly helps from a legal compliance perspective".

"We currently have over 50 000 members. As a result, the NSBC simply cannot be without e-mail capacity for even an hour. Microsoft and Forrest Technologies have ensured that we are no longer at risk in this regard".