CFP Software
CFP Software specialise in supplying Lettings, Property Management and Estate Agency software. They have 1600 customers across the UK, making CFP Software the market leader in their field.
They also have a graphic design studio that offers website and print design to clients in a wide range of sectors.
Managing Director Mark Daruvalla says: “We have three ADSL lines at present and our firewall distributes use between them- but this solution does not offer sufficient bandwidth to met our needs.
“Included in our support services is a remote diagnostic service to our clients: - in other words, if they have a problem with our software, we dial in and sort the problem out for them. However, this is slower than we would like at present.
“ We also offer an accounts service for clients – CFP Bureau. Through this, we can operate our clients’ accounts for them by dialling into their systems and handing them remotely on their behalf. The clients can see what we are doing in real time and so they can see that the system can be very slow, which is far from ideal and is making it hard for us to get this new service to really take off.
“Meanwhile, our Design Studio is hampered by the slow speeds of uploading artwork. Of course, most of their work involves sending out layouts and artwork to clients and if this could be done over a broadband system with improved bandwidth, a considerable amount of time would be saved. This would free up our designers to spend more time actually being creative rather than battling with the broadband connection.
“ We are also about to launch a new service, the CFP Training Academy. This will deliver online training to our clients. The plan is that we have a copy of our software hosted on a computer in our office here at Redruth that will become our server. Clients will then be able to log in via a virtual private network or remote desktop. If we had a high speed broadband connection to support this, it would be fantastic and could make all the difference between success and failure of the project.
“As we go forward at CFP Software, we aim to continually innovate. However, our aspirations are very dependent on the availability of a quality fibre optic broadband infrastructure.
For example, we would like to be able to host our software programmes on our own server but the infrastructure is simply not available in Redruth to make this feasible. Instead, we have to outsource to a company in Exeter, paying extortionate rates just to achieve the space we require. This impacts on our competitiveness as the expenditure makes it difficult for us to compete with others in our field elsewhere in the UK, who may benefit from an improved infrastructure.
“As a company specialising in innovative software solutions, we have big plans for the future but we are concerned that our plans may be hampered by an inadequate digital infrastructure.”
