Was The Snow Last Week Worth £1.2Billion?

Jill woke to all this at around 6am and took one look at the snow drifts outside her window; she was horrified at the traffic reports, motorists having to be rescued from their cars. The wind was bitter and took the temperature to -6 (not Siberia I know but cold none the less). Having washed she made herself a cup of tea and thought about all those journeys to work, delays, getting the snow off the car. The time was approaching 7.45am and she needed to be at work for 8.30am, did she have time for another piece of toast? Yes but she liked to get in early and so she decided to take it with her. Plate and toast in hand she walked into her office and logged on. There she said good morning to Cathy and Roy two of her colleagues that had beaten her into the office. Not too many issues left over from the previous day so they waited for support issues that were called in from clients.

Who are Jill, Cathy and Roy? Three of the technical support team at DPS Software that are based in North London. Where are Jill, Cathy and Roy? Well Jill is in Sunderland, Cathy is in Birmingham and Roy is in Leicester they are all connected to the systems at DPS using VOIP and Citrix. They all use DPS Outlook Office case management software to look at client histories, previous conversations, document histories and so on. Since Outlook Office is all inside Outlook this means they get all their emails, appointments, tasks and client and mater case history in one place, Outlook.

20% of the British workforce did not make it into work for part of last week costing the British economy around £1.2billion – that’s right £1.2 BILLION. Quite a lot of money, agreed? Why? Well we had some snow, more snow than normal but still not the same level as you might get in say Switzerland or Canada or some parts of the States. However it seems that the world (England and Wales) stops functioning when we see the fluffy white rain descend.

Jill, Roy and Cathy made it in and gave their clients a great service all of this without getting stressed out themselves in the process. 8 of DPS’s 42 strong staff work from home or are home based. Their software does case management and accounts for legal practice’s and ranges from software for probate, divorce, personal injury to criminal case management criminal billing. Supporting users is essential and this type of home working is part of their overall disaster recovery strategy.

So the moral of the story is stay at home and crack on with the job!