Foot Anstey Replaced Laptops Every 3 Years and Still Had Problems Nobody Could Pin Down - Until Applixure

Before Applixure

• Problems that vanished the moment you looked. "People were telling us that they were having problems; however, a lot of those problems were transient," says Shaun Friend, Head of Technology Services at Foot Anstey. "It's not unusual to be told about a problem, but by the time you take a look, the problem has gone away."
  
  
• Intermittent issues, hard to track down. "These problems are frustrating: they're intermittent, and they're not necessarily easy to track down. The end result is that the person using that device feels like it's not working as well as it should."
  
  
• No fast way to see how widespread an issue really was. Small problems could easily become "quite noisy" across the business without a reliable way to confirm their actual scope.
  
  
• A modern fleet that still wasn't immune. Despite a strict 3-year laptop replacement programme, meaning no laptop in the business was more than three years old, common technology challenges persisted.

Why Foot Anstey Chose Applixure

Shaun explored multiple options before settling on Applixure. What stood out was the dashboard's ability to bring together data that technically existed elsewhere but took real effort to access: "If you've got the time to spend going into various portals, exporting huge amounts of data, and running lots of queries, then absolutely the data is mostly there. Applixure inserts it into a handy dashboard that allows us to very clearly know where the biggest issues are."

The deployment matched the promise. A four-week trial was enough to commit to a full rollout via Foot Anstey's normal SCCM deployment, a completely silent install. "People didn't even know Applixure Analytics was there," Shaun says. Within a few hours, 10% of devices were already reporting in. The full rollout across the company took about 5 hours. "I was pleasantly surprised to see that Applixure really was simple to deploy, probably one of the simplest things we've ever deployed here."

What Changed

• Transient problems became traceable. With Rewind-to-History, the Service Desk can see a timeline of changes on any device, installed software, crash events, and which specific updates caused them. "It allows them to get into the details very quickly when someone is having a problem. It also allows them to validate how widespread that problem is, rather than having to guess."
  
  
• Proof that the 3-year replacement cycle is worth it. Replacing around 180 laptops in one summer moved Foot Anstey's device score up by 0.5, driven largely by removing older devices and the battery wear that came with them. "That's a concrete example of our business, which proves that we should continue to replace our laptops every three years."
  
  
• Monthly board reporting backed by real trend data. The Service Score feature lets Shaun track performance over time in a way the team couldn't before. "It's great if our score is 'average,' but we want to be above average... Analytics allows us to track our score and its trends, which we couldn't do before."
  
  
• Software version reliability became visible. Every time a new product is deployed, Applixure helps monitor which versions are reliable and which aren't, and the pattern mirrors what users actually experience.
  
  
• Shadow IT and Cyber Essentials compliance improved. "Applixure helped us on our cybersecurity journey as well... it very quickly allows you to find some of the shadow IT that might be happening out in your business and allows you to correct that."
  
  
• Value was obvious from day one. "From day one, we could see that Applixure Analytics was going to help us solve our problems. It gives us some really good, credible insights into what is actually happening, it's not very often that you install a product and instantly see its value."

In Their Own Words

"A lot of the data that Applixure surfaces is available in other places, if you've got the time to spend going into various portals, exporting huge amounts of data, and running lots of queries. Applixure inserts it into a handy dashboard that allows us to very clearly know where the biggest issues are and where you can have the biggest impact by solving particular problems."

— Shaun Friend, Head of Technology Services, Foot Anstey

Running a modern fleet and still getting complaints you can't reproduce? Start a free 30-day trial or book a demo — Applixure deploys in 5 hours across your entire fleet.