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Quick glance summary.
The challenges.
- The company required onsite cover for their current IT Manager, who was taking extended leave.
- In addition to onsite support, they also required telephone and remote support cover for the staff that work from home.
- The companies IT infrastructure consisted of many on-premises servers, including application and database servers, in addition to an enterprise hardware security system application that needed 3rd line expertise for ongoing maintenance, updates and patching,
Our solutions.
- Complete a full handover with the IT Manager before their leave began.
- Supply a full-time onsite field support technician for 3-months to provide day-to-day deskside and infrastructure support.
- Provide telephone and remote technical help to the remote workforce when needed via our helpdesk team and our onsite engineer.
- Supply a 3rd line engineer to complete all scheduled updates, maintenance and patching of the clients IT systems within and outside of business hours.
The outcomes.
- By using our fully managed IT Manager cover service, our client did not experience any commercial or financial disruption to their business operations during the absence of their IT Manager.
- The client made significant savings by outsourcing their IT manager cover instead of hiring an IT contractor on an expensive short-term agreement. They also benefitted from having a 3rd line engineer available when required.
- In addition to providing day-to-day support, our technician also completed any other onsite IT tasks the client requested, such as installing new IT equipment, setting up new users and arranging for their old IT equipment to be recycled.
- Following the completion of our 3-month staff cover term, we now provide the client with ongoing absence and holiday cover throughout the year, in addition to delivering IT projects and providing complex IT assistance when required.
Continue reading the case study in full.
The challenges.
The company was losing their IT manager for 3-months, with no internal cover.
Typically, arranging staff cover is never a problem for this client because most other departments within the business were adequately staffed to cope with any absence. However, the only IT employee in the Company was the internal IT Manager who was taking extended leave. This left our client with a huge technical void to fill.
They had recently introduced hybrid working.
As part of their internal restructuring, the company had made the decision to introduce a hybrid working model which allowed the staff to work from home 2 days a week. The IT Manager was tasked with providing telephone and remote support to the homeworkers and again, there was no-one within the company that could take over this responsibility.
Their IT infrastructure needed constant monitoring and updating.
For a company of their size, the IT infrastructure was complex. Much of the IT managers time was spent completing daily maintenance tasks and checks, in addition to ensuring that scheduled updates and patches were tested and successfully applied (including out of hours when needed).
Our solution.
Our client approached us after finding us online when searching for IT staff cover services (good to see our SEO is working!) Once we discussed their challenges with them in further detail, we agreed to provide them with a full-time, temporary IT Manager cover package that incorporated the following services:
IT Manager handover.
Before the IT manager left on extended leaved, we arranged for the client to interview our field support technician, in order to ensure they were happy with the person we had selected to provide onsite cover. We also arranged for the technician to spend a week onsite working alongside the IT manager, so they could become familiar with the IT systems and staff.
In addition, the IT manager spent a considerable amount of time with one of our 3rd Line engineers so they could gain a full understanding of the IT systems. This included completing scheduled updates and patches under observation from the IT Manager.
Lastly, we also ensured that any internal documentation needed to support the network was complete and up to date before the IT Manager departed.
Provide onsite IT manager cover for 3-months.
One of our experienced second line field support technicians was selected to attend the client’s office from Monday to Friday for 3-months to act as their internal IT manager. For this particular role, we chose one of our long-standing technicians with many years’ experience of providing deskside and client facing support.
In the absence of their permanent IT provision, our technician was tasked with providing on-demand desktop support to the staff, in addition to completing any other IT related tasks. These tasks included sourcing new equipment, installing and configuring new hardware and applications, liaising with 3rd party service providers on the client’s behalf and working with our 3rd line engineer to maintain the existing infrastructure.
Provide technical support for all staff WFH.
The client’s hybrid working rotation policy means that on average, 60% of the staff work at the office and the other 40% work from home every day. Our highly experienced helpdesk team supplied on-demand telephone and remote support to the remote staff from 7:00am to 6:30pm Monday to Friday. This allowed our stand-in IT manager to concentrate on supporting the office-based staff and maintain the clients IT systems.
Provide a 3rd line support engineer to maintain the clients IT systems.
One of our internal 3rd line support engineers worked closely with our onsite IT manager to complete any scheduled maintenance and install any updates and patches for their IT systems, including their on-premise servers, security devices, backup devices and cloud services. Any major updates were pre-tested and scheduled for completion outside of the clients standard operating hours (typically on a weekend).
The outcome.
Our 3-month IT Manager cover tenure was completed successfully with no disruption to our client’s day-to-day business operations.
For our client, it was very much “business as usual” in every sense of the word. The owners were so happy with the service that they asked us to provide ongoing absence and holiday cover for their IT Manager in the future. We also provide the client with “early bird” telephone and remote support for staff that make an early start at the office, or when working from home. This service is provided by our helpdesk team.
In addition, our projects team has recently completed a cloud-migration project for the client. Our team worked closely with their in-house IT manager to help them make a successful transition from on-premise servers to a Cloud services environment.