July 2003
How Linacre Communications is improving links with clients through high-speed internet
Nigel Linacre heads up Linacre Communications in Chippenham, Wiltshire. Back in April 2003, having set up Beaten Track Internet Café at Chippenham Railway Station, Nigel moved to new premises where his company Linacre Communications creates and facilitates management training courses. Having experienced broadband at the Internet Café, Nigel made a point of requesting high-speed internet again.
At Linacre Communications, the team works at the cutting-edge of personal development training programmes. For example clients can request that their staff are tutored in 'how to handle stress', a course which covers various methods of relieving stress from calming techniques, to visualisation and hypnotism. Customers can also access www.worldoftraining.com if they are looking for specific training for their company.
Linacre Communications' clients are mainly spread across Europe and Africa, and most communication needs to be carried out via email. Nigel believes that with broadband, 'we can communicate with our clients in Spain, South Africa, France, Nigeria and Ghana reliably with a super-fast internet connection. We actually ask clients to send through soft copies as opposed to paper documents – where this is not possible, it's like stepping back into another age. Broadband allows us to speed up and I believe we are between 30 and 40 per cent faster with broadband than with previous technologies. Travel although necessary has also become less frequent too."
Linacre Communications has a core team of staff who are online all the time.
"Instant messaging is a new communications medium with its own set of rules," according to Nigel. "This is literally exploding for us now. It's inexpensive, fast, immediate and provides a whole record of a conversation which is helpful in determining what actions have been agreed with the client!"
Nigel is stunned at how seldom large emails are a problem for the company now. "Emails arrive at the office in seconds and we take this for granted. My expectations keep growing – if I had to go back to the old days without broadband I would be miserable. Broadband is now part of the furniture, if we didn't have it, it would feel as if the furniture was broken!"