Vercity – Ensuring Business Continuity & Security into the Future
![Vercity Vercity](https://www.espria.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Vercity-1024x538.webp)
An award-winning and solutions-led business, Vercity provides a range of financial management and consultancy services. Their comprehensive, yet flexible approach provides a clear framework for optimising their clients’ assets. Vercity help define their clients’ lifecycle cost model, develop strategic partnerships and set out asset strategies. Vercity’s clients benefit from optimised value that identifies, manages, and mitigates risk while achieving cost certainty.
Vercity work across complex facilities on two continents and bring over two decades of knowledge and expertise to their clients’ business. By providing insights across multiple sectors, they help to convert valuable lessons into new opportunities. With a proactive management approach, Vercity provide peace of mind, delivering value for money and assurance on performance.
The Objective
With staff working in 47 different office locations (plus hybrid workspaces) across numerous projects, IT services are at the forefront of employee productivity and business functionality. Their busy in-house IT team therefore need to ensure business continuity into the future.
It was imperative to partner with a sustainable IT vendor able to provide industry insights and advice on technology roadmaps and business goals. It was also a requirement to keep both staff and customer data secure – vital for any asset management business whilst maintaining regulatory compliance.
The Challenge
With an insufficient in-house resource to provide the level of technical support and specialisms required, Vercity felt they had outgrown their predominantly on-premises focussed service provider, which had resulted in poor resolutions. As technology had moved on, Vercity engaged the services of a multitude of disparate point solution and service providers. However, they lacked the cloud-focussed, trusted provider and expertise to guide them into the future.
With numerous sites and time zones, and some staff receiving limited support, there was a need to centralise systems and resources to benefit from a standardised strategic IT approach.
Following the global pandemic and the increased cyber risk, Vercity recognised the immediate need for a far greater and improved security strategy.
The Solution
Central to the Espria solution was an excellent end-user experience provided across two continents, whilst delivering value for money. This was manifested through a Managed Service Solution which knitted together all the threads of previously separate services, consolidating the contact points and service provision.
Working to an agreed SLA, the specialist support requirements encompassed:
- 24/7 helpdesk, network, server, cyber security and Microsoft framework and licences
- Penetration Test and current state assessment result remediations
- Ongoing 6 monthly cyber security assessments
- Service Desk with agreed SLAs and Best Practise including Account and Service Delivery Management within the ITIL framework
- Monthly Service Reviews and Reporting
- Service Improvement Plan
- Transition Management
- A multi-level partnership with road mapping and strategy alignment
- Contract Management and Sustainability Review – Vercity asked that any solution be sustainable and that we highlight to them any opportunities to improve their ESG score.
Next Steps
Since the award of the contract and the ongoing development of a closer working relationship, Espria have continued to help form a long-term strategy identifying and implementing opportunity for automation, utilising Power BI, improving networking and firewall upgrades, security improvements, hardware and software licences, intranet strategy and implementation.
“Working with Espria has given greater depth and breadth to our IT strategy and enhanced the skillset of our ‘team’. In Espria, we have found a partner who not only understands the needs of our business, but who also works with us to develop future growth plans. Our Client Director, Andrew has always provided expert industry advice and is a great sounding board, as well as being friendly and approachable. I can see our business relationship extending far beyond the current contract scope and period as we collaborate so well together.” Nigel Keen IT Manager, Vercity
You may be interested in
Your guide to leveraging NCE pricing to get the best value
Renewing your Microsoft Licensing Agreement is an opportunity to align your IT strategy with your business goals. It allows you to take advantage of the latest technologies, optimise costs, and ensure compliance with industry standards. While this might seem straightforward at first glance, to achieve the best value and biggest discounts, it’s often more complex than it appears and navigating the renewalprocess requires careful planning. In this Blog we will walk through what you need to know about the new Microsoft Licensing rules,when to get the best value from your renewal, and how to review…
Loving your customers with AI, cybersecurity and peace of mind with MSP support
2024 has marked a massive shift for SME IT needs, as creating an appropriate and optimised business strategy has become an increasingly difficult challenge for business owners and IT operators nationwide.
Protect your student data from continued ransomware attacks, says Espria
With ransomware rates still high for education organisations, better security oversight and orchestration is needed across UK schools.
Fortify and Reassure with Compliance and Cybersecurity Synergy
With new cyber threats emerging, businesses will need to develop a seamless and blended approach to cyber and compliance for strategic success.
UK businesses cannot continue risking reputation with shoddy security, says Espria
Sophos’ 2024 Threat Report recently highlighted ransomware as the biggest existential cyber threat to small businesses. While cyberattacks on large companies and government agencies may receive more news coverage, Sophos reported that SMB’s are generally more vulnerable to cybercriminals and suffer more proportionally from the results of a breach.
Peace of mind: Cloud is key in scaling systems to your business needs
Meeting the demands of the modern-day SMB is one of the challenges facing many business leaders and IT operators today. Traditional, office-based infrastructure was fine up until the point where greater capacity was needed than those servers could deliver, vendor support became an issue, or the needs of a hybrid workforce weren’t being met. In the highly competitive SMB space, maintaining and investing in a robust and efficient IT infrastructure can be one of the ways to stay ahead of competitors.