OUR STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP CASE STUDY WITH VANARAMA AUTOMOTIVE GROUP
Optimising IT and Vanarama developed a robust and long-lasting strategic IT partnership through an in-depth consultative approach to technology. Together, we optimised Vanarama’s IT platform, enabling their ambitious growth plans.
THE BUSINESS: VANARAMA
Vanarama — part of the Autorama Group — is the company behind market-leading van hire, car hire, insurance provision, fleet management and vehicle leasing services. Their brands include Vanarama and Motorama.
THE CHALLENGE FACED BY VANARAMA
Vanarama initially engaged with Optimising IT in relation to their Information Security and IT strategy. More specifically, they were looking for an IT support service that took a consultative and proactive approach to IT management solutions.
What Vanarama needed was a strategic partner, not just an outsourced IT department.
Optimising IT was tasked with providing a fully Managed IT Services support package, one that would underpin the ongoing IT Strategy that was key to Vanarama’s day-to-day operations. Vanarama required a high level of service that promised reliable and consistent support to ensure their essential digital services and internal connectivity.
Vanarama were keen to develop a user support structure that offered a single point of contact for their organisation. Their challenge was finding a service that could provide them with both high-quality customer service while also giving them access to senior technical experts that could help resolve their IT problems as they arose. Traditionally within IT system management, customer service specialists are not capable of providing high-quality technical support.
Optimising IT approaches the help desk system differently, and we staff our call resolution services with highly-trained technicians. The result is high rates of first contact problem-solving and rapid IT fault resolution, exactly what Vanarama needed.
THE RESULTS: WHAT DID WE DO?
Daniel Taylor, Chief Finance Officer for Vanarama, spoke about the results Optimising IT has delivered for the automotive group:
“As a consultative partner, Optimising IT is helping to shape the network, IT services and security strategy to help underpin our ambitious growth strategy. They have taken time to understand our requirements and develop an IT strategy to meet those needs.”
Optimising IT got to work on supporting Vanarama’s efforts to streamline their IT systems quickly. We hit the ground running by making immediate changes to their long-running technical issues with their VPN provider, resolving connectivity problems plaguing their remote working staff. We helped secure their agile working process while giving the organisation better network access.
Moving forward, we developed a standardised and company-wide approach to workplace productivity tools with Office 365, helping to improve productivity and collaborative opportunities. We also stabilised server capacity issues and implemented proactive and preventative maintenance to reduce the risk of technical problems and costly downtime. Our cyber security services also helped identify and reduce potential risks to Vanarama’s information security, preventing data breaches and optimising data handling.
These infrastructure changes and improvements helped to dramatically reduce the need for IT tech support across the Vanarama company structure. We saw an initial reduction and then sustained a low support ticket request rate, supported by our Continuous Service Improvement Programme (CSIP). This seeks to address immediate problems and use support ticket data to take preventive actions and reduce potential incidents in the future. Optimising IT’s proactive problem management mindset led to monitoring repeat calls to investigate root cause analysis and deploying appropriate resolutions to fix underlying issues, leading to the aforementioned sustained low support ticket rates.
Optimising IT also consolidated third-party supply chain management for IT service, hardware and software provision under a single point of contact and service management system. This made it much easier and far more convenient for Vanarama to track contractors, suppliers and report on supply chain status.
THE APPROACH: HOW DID WE DO IT?
Our consultative approach to managed IT solutions allowed us to come into the Vanarama project with a unique perspective. Our approach meant we could work with Vanarama to shape a new IT and security strategy in a way that made sense to their overall business goals and objectives. We were determined to enter this strategic partnership with a focus on supporting Vanarama’s ambitious growth plans. Only by getting to know the business and its unique challenges could we do that.
Our first and most influential change was to update the business’s technical support platform. We believed Vanarama would benefit from a dynamic approach to IT help desk and on-site, deskside support services. We introduced a support activity that gave Vanarama staff access to experienced and knowledgeable analysts who also held vital skills in customer service. Optimising IT’s support team could take a personal yet pragmatic approach to IT support resolution.
The purpose of this support service development was to ensure that end-users working for Vanarama had direct contact with high quality and consistently effective support experts who were also easy to understand and engage with. We wanted to avoid the ineffective triage system often deployed by large IT service providers, which separates technical support from customer service support, leading to longer service and resolution timeframes and unclear language and jargon-rich conversions.
With an efficient outsourced Service Desk in place, we could move onto enhancing workplace productivity, including changes to network access, introducing new work productivity tools and updating IT systems. Our proactive approach to Vanarama’s IT strategy meant the organisation could then look to introducing new internal value-added IT projects, helping to drive their business forward. With a robust and reliable IT system now in place, there was room for Vanarama to continue their ambitious extensions through technical development.
HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY BENEFITS FOR VANARAMA
Our commitment to getting to know Vanarama’s IT landscape and understanding their problems meant we could effectively support their business strategy and priorities. This resulted in delivering a fully managed service that has increased resilience, reduced user downtime and empowered user confidence in Vanarama’s core IT systems.
This case study demonstrates how a consultative, proactive strategic partnership approach to IT can help businesses shape their technology and security strategy in a way that is laser-focused on success, just as Vanarama did.
The key highlights of our work with the automotive enterprise included:
- Reviewing the IT landscape to help identify areas of improvement and best practice, covering both quick-wins and a longer-term strategic roadmap
- Improvements to information security by carrying out a holistic review of cyber attack risks and data handling
- Understanding the business strategy and priorities to optimise the use of technology in line with it supporting specific business growth plans
- Providing a solution that promises flexibility, security, scalability and great value.
