The Client

SVMA is an Engineering Consultancy based in Edgbaston, Birmingham. The company has been trading for 15 years and specialises in the transportation, mechanical, electrical and facilities management verticals. The highly knowledgeable team of consultants work with a range of big-name clients, including Google, Cadburys and the Houses of Parliament.  It’s therefore essential that their IT system is robust, secure and able to keep up with a fast-paced environment.

  The Problem

When we were first contacted by SVMA, it was clear they were not happy with their existing

provider. There was an overall feeling throughout the entire organisation that their IT service was falling short of promises- from bad advice to poor quality hardware, a range of problems were seriously impacting on productivity.

Janet Newbold told us that sighs, moans and shakes of the head were all a part of everyday working life in the office; all caused by IT related issues. “After joining SVMA, I was shocked by the amount of IT and general technology complaints that there were”, Janet told us. IT is meant to make life easier, but clearly the current set-up was having the opposite effect.

When we visited the site, we quickly uncovered a huge variety of issues, including an over complicated and unstable network, outdated email system, unreliable Wi-Fi and sluggish computers running on old and incompatible software. Server backups were unreliable and often didn’t run for weeks on end, with no tests in place to ensure files would be safe should a disaster occur. Most worrying of all was the poor security – some computers had no Antivirus software at all, leaving the organisation open to cyber-crime, and a substandard firewall increased the risk even more.

Trust in IT providers was at an all-time low, so finding a company they could feel safe with was another huge challenge.  After spending several weeks talking to different IT companies in and around Birmingham they made the decision to work with us here at Compex IT.

  The Compex IT Solution

We knew how important it was to build a good rapport with Janet and the team and restore their faith in IT professionals. After clearly explaining our findings and suggested solution, we quickly moved their old and outdated email system over to Office 365 and worked over the weekend on simplifying and updating their computer network. To streamline operations, we updated software to Windows 10, standardising devices throughout; replacing old computers and updating others to bring everything up to speed.

The entire network was made far more secure; servers hardened, computers were installed with the latest anti-virus software and the outdated Firewall was replaced.

We installed a fast new Wi-Fi system and implemented Office 365 backup to keep all emails safe and accessible. To help the team collaborate and share data both internally and with outside consultants we installed Microsoft Teams, and to solve the back-up issues we installed a new business continuity solution which backs up data every 30 minutes and replicates it to the Cloud. This also allows the server to be “virtually turned on” to ensure the backups are ready for a Disaster Recovery situation.

SVMA is now enjoying a robust, secure, highly efficient IT system they can rely on. Since moving emails to Office 365 the team reported they instantly benefited from a much more reliable, secure email that has also vastly improved collaboration. Staff are now able to benefit from accessing their emails and schedules from anywhere through the flexibility of Office 365, and now everyone has the same tools they work on documents in a format that’s instantly accessible.

After reconfiguring and simplifying their over complicated network, performance has increased, the system is at last stable and it’s  much quicker to diagnose related issues – leading to a significant reduction in downtime.

There has been a major boost to productivity thanks to a fast network and speedy Wi-Fi, and people are better equipped to do their jobs with computers that actually meet their needs – with no more workflow bottlenecks.

SVMA now have the peace of mind that their data is protected and their systems are safe from potential cyber-attacks, and they also know there’s a robust business continuity solution in place if the worst should happen.

They’re also enjoying a significant reduction in IT-related costs now everything is up to date and there’s no need for regular call-outs.

  What the Client said