Ward Diamond Views its Switch to Concept On-Demand Very Positively

Chessington, UK – March 13th, 2009 – Concept Integrated Systems, (www.esg-concept.com) developers of the integrated agency management system, Concept™, has today announced that recruitment advertising specialist, Ward Diamond, is enjoying a very successful transition to Concept On-Demand. Ward Diamond (WDAD), a Concept user since 2000, has seized the opportunity to move from its on-premise version of Concept to take advantage of the hosted model and its associated infrastructure and cost efficiencies.

WDAD specialises in recruitment advertising, website design and marketing communications and since 1995 has been helping clients from all sectors attract talented employees, while reducing costs and making the whole recruitment process easier. Today, WDADs' clients benefit from expert services in: recruitment advertising, research, online recruitment, website design, response management, employer branding, employee communications, graduate recruitment and print & design.

Mike Heal, managing director of WDAD explains the raison d'etre behind the agency's move to Concept in a hosted environment. "Since we first starting working with Concept we have grown significantly in terms of our service offering, staffing levels and billings and throughout that time Concept has provided the robust and flexible sales order processing functionality that we required. However, on occasion, we had issues with system downtime caused by the IT infrastructure that supported Concept. We can't justify the investment in an in-house IT manager and as such hardware maintenance and upgrades were an additional responsibility that fell on the MD's shoulders." Mike continues, "Such a business-critical function required more expertise and time than I could personally offer so I was keen to investigate other cost-effective solutions rather than overseeing and investing in the costly new hardware. Switching to Concept in a hosted environment appeared a simple and easy was to resolve this issue."

After an initial period of testing, the transfer of data was a quick and seamless process that has now been working across 4 locations without any serious interruption since late 2007.

Ian Tomlins is Divisional Director of Concept and adds, "WDAD is one of our longest standing customers and we are delighted that we have successfully transitioned them from the on-premise to on-demand Concept model. Making the switch is easy and many of our customers have now accepted this model as the new, efficient way of buying software which frees them up to get on with their own business rather than fretting over IT infrastructure and software maintenance."

To find out more about Concept please visit www.esg-concept.com