Business case studies
James Wharram Designs
James Wharram Designs, based in Devoran, designs and sells a range of plans for self-build catamarans. The company has customers around the globe, including Japan, South America and Indonesia, with around 80% of its trade being sourced overseas.
In the mid 50's, based on his research into ancient Polynesian boat design, James Wharram built the first off-shore catamaran in Britain and sailed it out into the Atlantic. While the world's yachting community were busy dismissing such a design as a worthy sea-going vessel, James was landing his catamaran in the West Indies. There he built a second Polynesian style catamaran and sailed it back to the UK being the first to sail a catamaran across the North Atlantic. These Trans-Atlantic crossings etched the name 'James Wharram' into the annals of yachting history.
Now, with 10,000 sets of plans sold, Wharram 'Cats' can be seen in harbours across the world.
A step improvement in broadband speeds
Hanneke Boon, one of three partners, says: “We connected to superfast broadband as soon as it became available in Devoran and we are experiencing a step improvement in broadband speeds. This is helping us save time and money as it is now so much faster to carry out online research and upload and download photos. As so many of our customers are overseas, we are very dependent on email contact and it is fantastic to be able to upload and send photos so much faster.
We also have three boat yards where the catamarans are built and two of these are in the Far East. They regularly send us photos to show progress and I supervise the builds remotely. Superfast broadband has transformed the ease with which we can do this.”
Making the most of the opportunity
Hanneke continues: “The vast majority of our customers find us online and so search engine optimisation and regular maintenance of the website are critical. Now we have superfast broadband, we plan to invest in making the most of the opportunity over the next year, investigating different ways of keeping the website fresh and relevant, such as more use of video. Superfast broadband will help us make the site more dynamic.
“We will also investigate applications such as those available through ‘cloud computing’ which will help us streamline our business processes, such as through online backup and other software we could not have accessed before.
Driving forward the business
“Superfast broadband is also making it easier to use Skype to talk face to face with customers and colleagues round the world, as the faster speeds help with the quality of the connection.
Hanneke concludes: “Superfast broadband is helping us drive forward our business. We are an internet dependent business as we sell from Cornwall to global customers mainly through our website, so it is terrific to have such a valuable boost to our broadband speeds.”
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