iknow-uk

Ensuring availability, enhancing service

iknow-uk is an award-winning online marketing business aimed at the UK hospitality trade. Currently enjoying ten million visitors a year, the performance of its website is understandably of mission-critical importance to the company.

As an online business, iknow-uk’s success relies on visitors being able to always access its site - whenever they choose. So, facing issues with service reliability and availability, and forecasting a 100% increase in site traffic over the following year, the company decided it was time to find a new internet service and provider.

Our Managed Internet Access service delivered over Ethernet now supports the

company’s main site and seven sister sites. The online listings on these sites have been responsible for generating an estimated £150m in value for the UK tourism industry.

Keeping pace with growth

Few start-up companies can dream of the success enjoyed by iknow-uk. Having launched its first website (www.iknow-yorkshire.co.uk) in 2003, the company has won five business awards, gained over 1,500 customers, and generated more than one million booking enquiries.

ntl:Telewest Business plays an integral part in this success, by ensuring a rapid, reliable and always available online service.

Satisfied customers

iknow-uk’s commitment to provide excellent service to its customers is of paramount importance to the company – it’s 90% annual customer retention rate illustrates this. As a result, it offers all advertisers one month’s free trial, and a full money back guarantee if their advertising has not paid for itself within six months.

However, this pledge is based on confidence in the service it delivers, so when the company recognised that the end user experience was being adversely affected by internet connection problems and inconsistent web page availability, it was quick to act.

Marcus Simmons, Managing Director, iknow-uk, explains, "Since we began we have tried a number of internet and web hosting solutions. However, none offered us the levels of reliability we required. We’re very aware that we’re one of many alternative directories available on the internet, so we

need to ensure a positive end user experience and consistent customer service. As such, our sites must be continually available and 100% reliable – and, unfortunately, this wasn’t always the case."

Reliable operations

Faced with an unreliable service, as well as issues with responsiveness and resolution when reporting problems to their current supplier, iknow-uk recognised it needed to find a more reliable internet service provider.

Marcus explains, "As an internet business 100% of our customer administration is completed online. Because of the issues we faced sometimes there were several hours when we simply couldn’t operate. Obviously, this was not

acceptable."

In-house services

A call to ntl:Telewest Business to enquire about broadband provision led iknow-uk to choose our Managed Internet Access and Business Exchange Line services. Further discussions provided us with a more detailed understanding

of the company’s wider business requirements, so we also recommended that they hosted their website in-house to save costs and remove dependence on a third-party supplier.

"We hadn’t considered hosting our own website initially, but ntl:Telewest Business was prepared to offer us a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and the infrastructure to support it. Few companies offer this, so we were confident that we’d made the right choice," Marcus explains.

What it has made possible

With the solution in place, the internet connection now supports all iknow-uk’s connectivity requirements internally and externally. Our reliable service ensures continuously available sites, which has made uninterrupted internal administration possible, leading to improved customer service. Constant uptime has also had a positive impact on the site visitor experience.

"User feedback has been great. People are extremely happy with the speed and reliability of the site, and our IT manager’s weekly report monitoring the uptime of our servers supports this. So far, it has always been 100%. In-house hosting also means that problem resolution is now a rapid and effective process," Marcus explains.

Another success has been our monitoring service, which keeps iknow-uk up to date with the percentage of bandwidth being used. Marcus explains, "This has proved to be an invaluable planning tool. We’re experiencing such exponential

growth that the ability to proactively plan ahead – rather than in response to a crashed site – is priceless." In fact, since implementation, iknow-uk has already increased bandwidth and upgraded to a 10Mb Managed Internet Access on a

100Mb Bearer, to ensure continued availability as site visitor numbers grow.

He concludes, "The future looks very promising. We plan to keep growing, expand our existing sites, and add more in the coming months. However, my business is nothing without a reliable internet connection – and I’m pleased to say I’m confident my business is in safe hands with ntl:Telewest Business."