With offices in Surrey, Crown Golf is the UK’s largest golf club owner and operator with 23 golf venues primarily located in the South East of the UK. These range from pay and play courses, to members’ clubs and a highly prestigious leisure resort, St. Mellion, that includes a Top 100 golf course.
IT is vitally important to Crown Golf given the geographic dispersal of its operations and the increasing range of services expected by consumers. By 2014, this growing complexity led Crown Golf to engage one of Freeman Clarke’s Principals.
Mark Williams, Crown Golf’s Finance Director said:
‘Freeman Clarke’s involvement is invaluable as I can benefit from the experience of an established, proven IT Director, but without incurring the full cost.’
The principal joined Crown Golf team at a critical moment when it was necessary to relocate their head office at short notice due to the closure of one of their locations. He took control of this urgent project whilst also putting in place a clear IT strategy and roadmap to support the business strategy and improvement plan.
His remit has encompassed a huge range of issues included migration of local servers to private clouds, website hosting, business continuity, cyber-security, data protection and payment card handling.
The principal has also overseen a number of projects that support the growth of the business including a CRM upgrade, establishment of a central Call Centre, Wide Area Network upgrades and a server renewal programme.
He has also supported the senior team at Crown Golf through budget restructuring and strategic refinancing exercises.
Mark Williams, Crown Golf’s Finance Director said:
‘I now have someone within the senior team who can explain the complexities of our IT requirements and architecture in business terms and has provided clarity and direction to me and my technology team. Improvements and new initiatives are now clearly identified, prioritized, costed, explained and justified. Risks to our IT services and compliance requirements are brought to my attention and cost effective recommendations to address them are identified and implemented.
‘As a result, I have much greater confidence that our IT is secure, reliable and fit for purpose. For example, by moving our business critical servers to a high quality managed infrastructure facility, we have established a platform that we are now beginning to exploit with projects that underpin our company transformation strategy aimed at improving service and reducing costs.’
Crown Golf - Client story
A proven IT director to oversee management of costs and risks…
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