Case Study: Ethos Urban unifies its infrastructure into one platform

Ethos Urban transformed its digital services and IT infrastructure, evolving from functionally separate consultancies to a single unified urban development company.

Danny Lau, head of IT at Ethos Urban spoke to Digital Nation about the company’s transformation journey to move all infrastructure into one unified platform.

He said one of their biggest challenges was that their technology infrastructure was not fit for purpose as a national firm.

“Whether it's collaborating, it's the amount of storage that we had for our team to save documents, we even changed from having Word documents to a lot of 3D modelling outputs that the clients are wanting and needing,” he said.

“That technology was not conducive to what we wanted, the solutions we had did not allow for options for our staff to actually meet and collaborate nationally without having to take a plane on the fly into different offices.”

Lau said the business focuses on the collective intelligence within our firm, and their technology was not allowing for collaborative work.

He said, “At the same time, the employee experience was pretty average in that the support capability our staff would receive was not optimal. They did not allow them to focus on the client work, but at the same time, we couldn't allow them to work flexibly.”

To rectify this, Ethos Urban implemented Tecala nearly three years ago.

Lau said this platform has become an extension of the wider team at Ethos Urban. Previously, he said the external service provider would be more transactional than relational.

“Since we've been with Tecala the conversations with our business have shifted from partly being a frustration to now being a value add,” he said.

“It's more on how we can leverage technology to do better for our teams and our clients. It's been a big shift from what it was before to now having Tecala as a trusted partner within our business.”

From this platform, Lau said he has seen a change within the business.  

“IT is providing fit-for-purpose tools and support to our to all of our staff,” he ended.