Keeping business in the best of health
JoraPh Consulting has launched its pioneering performance "Health Check" for customers using Oracle database technology and has landed two new contracts worth £150,000 in the process.
JoraPh Consulting has launched its pioneering performance "Health Check" for customers using Oracle database technology and has landed two new contracts worth £150,000 in the process.
The company, based at Central Park in Telford, believes the development will help grow the business from a £2 million turnover to £8 million over the next five years.
Already working with some of the UK's top household names including DHL and FedEX, as well as county firm Fruit of the Loom, the directors behind JoraPh say the comprehensive testing, reporting and best practice Health Check is earning the company recognition as a market leader.
JoraPh Consulting Ltd has just recorded its most successful first quarter since the business was established in 2002 and managing director David Phizacklea believes a value-for-money approach is one of the keys to maintaining customers and generating new business at a time of an anticipated economic downturn.
"There's lots of talk about an impending recession in the UK. However, we've found that by maintaining a professional service but at the right price, our business continues to grow.
"We're competing against big offshore companies offering cheap services. However, cost-based provision isn't always the most effective way to retain or attract new clients and even some of those providers are now reverse off-shoring' back to the UK and Europe."
Mr Phizacklea believes that clients need to be assured that the process tools and systems are in place to ensure business continuity and one client endorsing the JoraPh approach is Technolog, the company behind smart meters.
Andrew Oliver, software and IT manager at Technolog, who recently secured a contract with National Grid Metering, said: "We started working with JoraPh Consulting in May 2007.
"They provided a health check and consultancy service on an Oracle system and ran a billing database for us. At the end of 2007, Technolog extended the contract with JoraPh to include a proactively monitored, remote-managed service and telephone helpdesk for the RAC system."
The JoraPh Health Check runs across Oracle databases, used by some of the world's leading companies to manage their information. The technology performs more than 300 individual checks and applies these to performance information from the system, giving a full picture of how the database is performing.
And should the company using the Health Check technology require it, JoraPh can take over any remedial work needed and ultimately can take over in a support role giving 24-hour, seven-day-a-week back-up.
Business development manager David Williams said JoraPh has spent five years developing the Health Check technology which has already been carried out for a number of leading companies across the UK and Europe.
"Five years ago, three of our directors who worked for Oracle at the time, decided to set up JoraPh and the business has grown steadily. But we recently won two new contracts, one for a music download business.
"They have three different databases for downloads. We went in and did the Health Check, found problems, and subsequently we are now supporting them on a 24-hour basis because they cannot afford to have any downtime in their line of business. And a second contract is with a finance company based in Turkey.
"And once again we are now supporting that organisation.
"The support side is interesting to a lot of companies because we are in difficult time for all industry, people would rather see a fixed budget. In the Oracle world, contractors are widely used but bringing in a contractor doesn't provide continuity. We do it at a fixed price per month."
The company also launched its new website, www.joraph.com, last week which they hope will also drive businesses opportunities forward.
