OUTSOURCED IT SERVICES CASE STUDY.

FULLY MANAGED IT SUPPORT.

How we helped a global wealth and asset management

firm overcome their IT Outsourcing challenges and

accelerate business growth with a fully managed

IT Support Service.

CASE STUDY SUMMARY.

5 MAIN CHALLENGES. 1. The clients existing IT Incumbent was underperforming 2. The client spent too much time managing ongoing conflicts between existing service

providers 3. IT support wasn’t available to staff that worked outside of traditional business hours 4. Support for mobile devices was not included in the clients original IT services agreement 5. Productivity was being affected by ongoing issues with Microsoft SharePoint

OUR SOLUTION. • Provide the client with a ‘Fully Managed’ IT services solution, which allowed us to take full

ownership of all day-to-day 1st to 3rd line IT operations • Ongoing maintenance, development and continuous improvement of the client’s IT

infrastructure becomes the responsibility of our dedicated Technical Account Manager • Our IT Department will now liaise with all 3rd party vendors on the clients behalf • Our London-based help desk team provides 24-hour IT support to the clients investment

advisers that work in a different time zone • Our in-house Microsoft applications specialist will identify and resolve problems with the

clients bespoke SharePoint Application

THE OUTCOME. The client now enjoys all of the benefits that come with a Premium IT Support service. This has led to improved efficiency throughout the entire organisation. • Day-to-day telephone and remote desktop and application support is provided by our

London-based 1st line service desk team • Complex IT issues are escalated immediately and passed onto our respective 2nd and

3rd line service desk engineers • All IT infrastructure support and application hosting/support is now provided by the same

incumbent • The client no longer acts as an intermediary between 3rd party vendors in order to get

their IT issues resolved (continued on next page)

• Availability of the client’s business-critical SharePoint application is greatly improved thanks to our 99.9% cloud services uptime guarantee.

• Immediate 24-hour telephone and remote IT Support is now available to the client’s Investment Advisors, regardless of where or when they are working

• IT now accounts for less than 1% of the business income and support for all mobile devices is included at no additional cost

• The client has reduced its IT support costs by 10% per user by switching to our premium IT services agreement

CLIENT OVERVIEW. Founded in 2013, our client is one of London’s fastest growing Wealth and Asset Management firms with a growing international customer base that includes pension funds, insurers, private banks and major institutions.

In addition to their head office in London, our client also has two satellite offices that are located in Geneva and Moscow respectively.

The company employs a team of 52 staff members, with the Chief Investment Advisers and Directors regally traveling between the three office locations, in addition to completing approximately 700 visits every year to investors around the world

The firm is dependent on IT for just about every element of their operations. Due to the nature of their business, it is essential for them to have uninterrupted access to their IT network, regardless of where they are located across the globe. It is also essential for their clients to have safe and secure access to the latest information about their respective investment portfolios.

Did you know?

Our IT Department is one of only six UK-based IT services organisations that is both ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2013 accredited.

THE CLIENTS EXISTING IT INCUMBENT WAS UNDERPERFORMING.

For the past five years, our client was very happy with the service levels provided by their existing IT incumbent and they had no reason to change providers. Unfortunately, in the past six months there was a rapid decline in service levels, with basic support requests such as a password reset taking up to 8 hours to complete.

In addition, the client’s staff were also spending an increasing amount of time chasing the IT service desk on a daily basis in order to try and get a growing number of support tickets resolved.

THERE WERE ONGOING CONFLICTS BETWEEN SERVICE PROVIDERS

The client was growing increasingly frustrated with managing a growing number of conflicts between the IT incumbent and the software company that developed their custom SharePoint application.

Whenever there was a problem, one company would always blame the other. This led to a difficult situation where the client was constantly stepping in as an intermediary in order to get their own IT issues resolved.

AND A LACK OF SUPPORT FOR THE INVESTMENT ADVISERS

Lastly, the existing IT company was struggling to provide support to the traveling investment advisers that worked outside of UK business operating hours because they didn’t have the resources necessary to provide a 24/7 IT support service.

Additionally, the client was also being charged a supplementary support fee for their mobile devices because they were not included in the original service agreement.

THE CHALLENGES.

“Both customers and staff alike were becoming frustrated with an increasing amount of IT infrastructure and support issues that were starting to have a major effect on productivity and more importantly, profitability. Because of this, it soon became clear to us that we could no longer continue working with our existing IT incumbent and we needed to upgrade to a premium support service immediately”.

THE SOLUTION. Following a successful competitive tender application, Our IT Department was chosen as the client’s new preferred IT services provider.

We proposed a ‘Fully Managed’ IT services solution, which would allow us to take full ownership of all day-to-day IT operations. It will be our responsibility to maintain, develop and improve the client’s IT infrastructure, in addition to acting as a liaison with the 3rd party vendors on their behalf.

Our fully managed solution encompasses the following service elements:

THE INITIAL ‘CLIENT TAKE-ON’ PROCEDURE* This procedure is conducted on the premises by a professional IT Consultant. The client take-on is an essential process that allows us to compile all the information required to support every element of our client’s business IT network.

It also gives us the opportunity to compile a detailed review of the existing network infrastructure, allowing us to highlight areas where the network is satisfactory along with areas that require urgent attention in addition to areas of the network where an upgrade is recommended.

TO QUOTE THE OFFICE MANAGER.

1ST LINE TELEPHONE AND REMOTE DESKTOP SUPPORT Day-to-day telephone and remote desktop and application support for all three client offices is provided by our London-based service desk team between the hours of 7am-7pm.

Our Fully managed IT support service contract includes basic support for ALL mobile smartphone and tablet devices used by our clients.

24-HOUR IT SUPPORT SERVICES A dedicated service for staff that are operating in different time zones (such as the Investment Advisors) that is provided by our UK-based 24/7 help desk.

We do not outsource any of our services. All our services are provided by our directly employed Microsoft and Apple certified IT professionals.

ONSITE REACTIVE FIELD TECHNICIAN SUPPORT Onsite support for the London office is provided by our team of Microsoft and Apple certified Field Support Technicians. This service is mainly used for hardware issues that cannot be resolved remotely or for setting up new equipment.

A DEDICATED TECHNICAL ACCOUNT MANAGER The client will have a dedicated Technical Account Manager who is responsible for continuity of service and the future development of the IT infrastructure in all three office locations.

A monthly account management meeting is conducted onsite with the company directorship to discuss ongoing improvements, as well as present our service performance figures and discuss the ongoing development of their IT network.

In addition, the Technical Account Manager takes full ownership of managing the transition process from the client’s old IT services provider, taking the stress and pressure away from the client.

24 HOUR NETWORK MONITORING We will implement our E-pulse Network Monitoring solution, which allows our London service desk team to monitor the IT systems in all three of the client’s offices in real-time and proactively respond to any business-critical network infrastructure issues.

The 7 Stage Client take-on process.

A typical client take-on process will work to the following schedule:

1. IT Alignment Meeting – An initial meeting between our IT Consultant and your internal management team to discuss the business challenges faced by your organisation and how we can align your IT in the future to meet these challenges.

2. Configure remote access – Allowing our service desk team to provide remote support. 3. Create Network Documentation - Document details of all IT equipment located onsite

where required. 4. Document network and administrator passwords required to access and support your

network. 5. Install our E-pulse Network Monitoring system to allow 24/7 network monitoring. 6. Conduct an IT Network Infrastructure audit - Review the status of your existing network

configuration including servers, workstations, network security, email, backup, internet connectivity and communications.

7. Present the client with a client-take on report that provides detailed information about the network and presents the results of the IT Network Infrastructure audit. This report includes a list of medium and long-term strategic recommendations where required and/or areas of the network that require immediate attention.

Did you know?

In 2017, Our IT Department was named Best Small to Medium Sized Business at the UK Best Business Awards!

SHAREPOINT PROBLEMS WERE AFFECTING PRODUCTIVITY. Our client was very frustrated by the ongoing performance issues with their customised SharePoint application and the blame culture that had developed between the service vendors.

SO WE ASKED THE STAFF FOR FEEDBACK As part of the client take-on process, our Technical Account Manager spoke at length with many of the staff members in all three offices in order to understand where their IT is failing and what we needed to do in order to improve their IT infrastructure.

From the feedback we received, it was clear that we needed to prioritise the resolution of the ongoing issues with SharePoint.

Although complex by design, the client was mainly using SharePoint as a basic document management solution, which allowed staff to collaborate and share documents across all three office locations from a centralised Intranet.

A separate customer Intranet portal had also been setup on SharePoint, which allowed their investors to securely access confidential information about their respective investment portfolios.

WE FOUND THE PROBLEM WITH SHAREPOINT After reviewing the staff feedback with our in-house SharePoint specialist, we quickly concluded that the problem was not with the application itself, but with the hosting platform.

Our client’s SharePoint application was being hosted on a ‘white label’ cloud services platform that was being used by the software development company to host all its client’s applications.

The public hosting platform they were using didn’t have the resources or bandwidth required to cope with the high volume of traffic that was being generated by all of the other applications that were hosted on the same server. Unusually, there was no disaster recovery solution in place that would act as a failover if the server crashed. This explains why SharePoint was crashing intermittently and why the staff and customers were experiencing so much downtime.

To add to the problems, it was taking the software company longer to resolve any hosting-related issues because they were outsourcing their hosted service to a third party.

OUR IT DEPARTMENT PROVIDED THE SOLUTION Our recommended solution was for the client to host their SharePoint application on our dedicated private cloud platform. This means:

• SharePoint application hosting and support is now provided a single incumbent. In addition to hosting, our in-house SharePoint experts will provide ongoing support directly to the client, eliminating any previous conflict issues between 3rd party vendors.

• Dedicated hardware means increased security. Our client knows exactly where their SharePoint application and confidential client data is being hosted, and that proper physical and network security is in place.

• Uptime has been increased dramatically. Our dedicated cloud services platform has been developed and is maintained in-house, giving us full control over configuration, troubleshooting and disaster recovery.

• Redundancy is in place. We always have one more server running then necessary. This allows us to shift resources between servers on the fly when performing maintenance and upgrades without the client experiencing any downtime. It also shortens the disaster recovery time.

THE FINAL OUTCOME.

24-hour IT Support, ongoing IT maintenance and the future development of our client’s IT infrastructure is now the full responsibility of Our IT Department. The client is completely alleviated from any day-to-day involvement in IT, allowing them to focus more time on their investors.

• The client now enjoys all of the benefits that come with a Premium IT Support service. Basic support tasks such as password resets and business-critical IT issues are now addressed immediately and they do not go into a ticketed cue. This has led to improved efficiency throughout the company and improved the investor’s experience.

• Complex IT issues are escalated immediately and passed onto our respective 2nd and 3rd line service desk engineers in the instance when they cannot be resolved by our 1st line support team.

• Scheduled maintenance tasks and ongoing IT development projects are currently being conducted by our team of highly technical IT Consultants and IT Project Managers.

• All IT infrastructure support and application hosting/support is now provided by the same incumbent. The client no longer acts as an intermediary between 3rd party vendors in order to get their IT issues resolved.

• Availability of the client’s business-critical SharePoint application is greatly improved thanks to our 99.9% cloud services uptime guarantee.

• Immediate 24-hour telephone and remote IT Support is now available to the client’s Investment Advisors, regardless of where they are working across the globe.

• The future development of the client’s IT Infrastructure becomes our responsibility, leaving them to focus on what they do best.

• IT now accounts for less than 1% of the business income. Support for all mobile devices is included in our Fully Managed IT Services Agreement at no additional cost.

• The client no longer has to pay a 3rd party software development company a retainer for hosting and supporting their SharePoint application.

• Our IT premium services agreement is 10% cheaper per user than the previous IT incumbent.

IN CONCLUSION.

The client is enjoying a cost-effective and fully scalable ’premium’ IT support service that meets their immediate support requirements not just for their European offices, but also for the team of advisors that travel frequently across the world to meet with their investors.

By using a fully managed service, the client is alleviated from making strategic IT decisions and the future development of all IT systems is now the responsibility of Our IT Department.

Did you know?

Our IT Department has also been a Microsoft Gold certified partner for over 10 years.

We are also Microsoft Gold Small and Mid Market Cloud Solutions accredited.

WE’LL SOLVE YOUR BUSINESS CHALLENGES AND ACCELERATE BUSINESS GROWTH WITH AMAZING SUPPORT AND CLEVER TECHNOLOGY. We’re an award-winning IT services organisation with over 20 years’ experience, providing a comprehensive range of IT Support services and technology solutions to organisations across London and the East of England.

10 GREAT REASONS TO MAKE OUR IT DEPARTMENT YOURS. 1. With a maximum 3-month rolling contract policy, you won’t be tied in to a long-term

agreement. 2. You’ll get to enjoy an award winning customer service experience. 3. We guarantee a smooth service transition from your existing IT services incumbent. 4. We’ll demonstrate a return on investment with a range of services that will add value by

helping to solve your business challenges. 5. We are local and our engineers are very punctual. 6. We’re trusted, reputable and highly accredited. 7. We’ve established lasting relationships with hundreds of clients across the east of England. 8. We have built our own dedicated cloud services platform. 9. We only employ clever people that have the right attitude. 10. Last but not least, we are all human beings!

WE’RE BIG ENOUGH TO DELIVER AND SMALL ENOUGH TO CARE. Call 020 8501 7676 to speak directly to a Business Development Manager and find out why over 400 business trust us to support, maintain and continuously improve their IT infrastructure.

WHERE TO FIND US.

Our London Office 22 Bevis Marks London EC3A 7JB Located within a short walking Distance of the Gherkin.

Our East of England Office 6 Eaton Ct, Eaton Socon Saint Neots PE19 8ER Located at Colmworth Business Park.

HOW TO CONTACT US. Call us 020 8501 7676

Email us info@ouritdept.co.uk

Tweet us @ouritdepartment

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