Watch the informative video here!
Meet Issaquah Honda Kubota
Issaquah Honda Kubota is a family run business, that does a bit of everything and anything when it comes to sales, rentals and service of industrial equipment. Zac Scammahorn, full-time manager, notes that this sort of shop “is kind of a dying breed. It’s a very difficult industry but it’s also a lot of fun, because you’re dealing with people.”
Tractors & hedge trimmers may not suggest images of advanced digital networks, but efficiently selling and renting $17 million plus worth of that equipment annually requires a reliable high-speed network and cloud-hosted apps for point-of-sale and other supporting software.
The challenge
Unfortunately, IHK suffered from regular network and telephony failures, with little to no support in sight. “Everything runs through the internet and our internet was dropping, our phones were dropping, and this was happening for months,” Zac recalls.
“The stress level made me go through the roof. My sales guys are saying, ‘Hey, my computer’s freezing halfway through a sale and its all deleted!”. My phones don’t work. I’m losing thousands of dollars a day. This time of the year, we’re doing $20,000 a day in parts sales, but if you can’t process the parts, you can’t collect the money. So, then you can’t pay your bills! It’s just so much stress for a small business.”
When he called the giant telecom that managed his network for help, it was like speaking into the abyss.
They said to wait five days for a technician to diagnose the problem — they might as well have said five years. Zac doesn’t mince words: “They’re the worst company to deal with on the planet. “You’re just another number to these big companies. They don’t care.”
Semaphore solves the problem
When Zac learned about Semaphore and its high-touch customer service and excellence in custom-built network infrastructure, he jumped at the opportunity to work with them.
“They got my phone systems running, they got the internet going,” he said. Then, Semaphore worked with Zac to plan, design, and implement a longer-term solution for his network and telephony needs.
Much of IHK’s issues were related to aging cable infrastructure and a piece-meal assortment of network devices added and modified over time without understanding of the impacts on the whole. Semaphore designed, implemented and now supports a cohesive new network and a modern cabling infrastructure.
Zac’s experience with Semaphore was the opposite of his experience with the telecom giant.
“It was straightforward. They told me what it was going to cost. I gave him a key to the store and I said ‘Go for it.’ A week later, it was done.” Semaphore even worked nights so Zac’s business wouldn’t be interrupted. Semaphore built the new infrastructure as a stand-alone, which meant Zac could transition from old to new without any disruption
A company that cares
The new system required an initial investment, but Issaquah Honda Kubota is saving nearly $1,800 per month and will pay off that investment in less than two years. More important, their network works and they have a human being who cares on the other end of the phone in those crucial moments.