JKR was by all accounts a success story. The tiny design studio from Camden is now a global phenomenon. But an old in-house solution was holding them back, and threatening their business.
JKR is a global design agency that exists to get brands noticed and chosen. Specialising in packaging design and the visual articulation of brands, all of their work is informed by their Brand First philosophy. The business is growing, employing around 150 people, and has a presence in Singapore and New York
as well as London.
What began life in 1990 as a tiny design studio in Camden has exploded into an international success story and one of the biggest businesses in its field. The business’ USP is its emphasis on strategy, helping businesses develop their whole product range.
A lot of what we do is about making brands visible on supermarket shelves, and helping brands foster trust and loyalty from their customers,” says Leon Bentham, head of IT at JKR. “People spend just a couple of seconds deciding what they want to buy, so visual impact is important.
Cross Continental Needs
JKR works with data in a number of ways, perhaps most importantly in the sending and receiving of large design files to its diverse portfolio of clients, repro design houses and advertising agencies, which are scattered across the world.
"Since branching out to New York and Singapore the need has increased for a fast, effective and global data transfer solution which is adaptable and resilient enough for the team to work on collaborative projects regardless of the many miles between each office."
“Most of our design work is done in London, but clients are everywhere. For certain jobs where face-to-face meetings are essential we send account managers from the closest office to the client’s location. Having a global file sharing solution is essential to our growth."
But when a job is ongoing they need to be able to send work back and forth quickly and reliably. “People at JKR work very closely with other parts of the business as well as with our clients, so having a global file sharing solution is essential to our growth.”
Before switching to Maytech, the business had developed its own FTP solution. According to Mr Bentham, the limits of the service were tied up in JKR’s own bandwidth and its geographical location. Though it was secure, clients had raised concerns about the usability and speed of the system.
The old solution was perfect for JKR in its day, but ever-increasing client demands and a growing global footprint meant the team had to start looking for a better way to send and receive data. An obvious step in this process was to move as many processes as possible into the Cloud.
“It was clear that moving to the Cloud would take a lot of the administration and the headache out of IT processes,” explains Mr Bentham, who help to spearhead the switch to a new service. He says the choice was bewildering and that a lot of clients, employees and partners were using different “random” file transfer solutions.
JKR moved to Maytech 18 months ago, the IT team particularly liked the legal transparency of the service, as well as its reliability, ease of use and ability to swap files back and forth globally.
The technology was initially trialled between their London and New York offices, but was soon rolled out further as it quickly became clear that it was the perfect solution.
“It’s good to go with one solid file transfer solution that you know is going to work,” says Mr Bentham. “One of the great things about Maytech is that they have servers in different geographical locations so pretty much wherever you are, you’re guaranteed a good service level.”
"Security is another key benefit, with some other services you don’t know where your content is going, who has your files or how long they will stay up there. You need to be confident in the service you work with and a professional outfit like Maytech is a huge benefit."
Not only has the administration time been cut by 90% or more, but clients are happier and troubled minds have been eased. “I would definitely recommend this to anyone; you can brand it simply and adjust it to your needs. It has enabled us to work as a truly global company.”
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