A specialist builders’ merchants with over 40 years of experience
strukta are specialist builders’ merchants with over 40 years of experience in the construction industry and a network of 10 trade stores across the south of England, providing over-the-counter sales as well as delivering to site. They prioritise customer service, going above and beyond to exceed expectations.
Paul Fleetwood is strukta’s IT Systems Manager responsible for overseeing their IT infrastructure, ensuring everything functions effectively, and planning IT projects.
Searching for the right balance
Before Paul Fleetwood joined strukta in 2018, their IT support was completely outsourced.
With around 120 users, strukta needs comprehensive IT support but is not large enough to require a full in-house IT department.
Paul quickly realised that conventional outsourced IT support did not offer good value for money for strukta. There was an overlap with their internal IT capabilities, so strukta were overpaying for a service they did not fully utilise. Paul felt that a previous IT provider they used “didn’t really have the model for this combined, co-managed situation so they were charging a lot for what they were actually doing, because I was doing a large proportion of it”.
strukta tried growing its internal IT team, which worked for a while, but it was hard to find and retain the right people and there was always the concern that absences and holidays could leave the company without the cover it needed.
Having tried both outsourcing and in-house options, Paul knew that strukta required something that was more tailored to its needs, but it was not easy to find a provider able to work that way.
Paul explains, “I talked to three different providers and two of them said that they didn’t normally provide a co-managed service but said they could sort something out. We’d had before, and it often led to frustrations or confusions around who does what. Whereas HBTech were already doing this for other people, they’ve worked on that co-managed model, so they were willing and proven able to be that flexible and produce a service offering that makes sense financially and technically.”
HBTech became the clear choice, able to tailor their support to exactly what strukta needed.
A clear division of responsibilities
strukta’s day to day business activities are managed through their ERP system (enterprise resource planning, a type of business management software), and it made sense for Paul and his internal team to retain responsibility for that. HBTech came on board to provide support for all other IT aspects, including ensuring that users have the connectivity they need to access the ERP.
This clear division of responsibilities makes it easy for strukta’s personnel to know who to contact for what. Paul explains that “we look after our main ERP system internally, so it’s quite a clear line and it’s been quite easy from that point of view.”
“Effectively on a day-to-day basis now we have unlimited phone support with HBTech, so people can contact them at any time for any reason.”
The right foundations for a great working relationship
Both strukta and HBTech were committed to the success of the co-managed system, and both invested time to ensure a smooth working partnership. Paul appreciated HBTech’s hands-on approach, “Obviously I had to commit some time to get HBTech up to speed on things and get my documentation together and HBTech were willing to commit too. Their service desk manager spent a lot of time on site with us just to make sure he understood the business, to ask questions about it and meet all the people. Their technical director came around with me, went to all the sites and documented all the networking. They invested a lot of time at the start of this process to make sure they understood our business.”
This investment of time and resources made the transition to co-managed support much easier and laid the groundwork for HBTech to work as an extension of strukta’s internal team.
“It is a true partnership. They understand our business and we understand how they work. And we both know when to go to the other one for decisions or questions or advice, it’s very much an even playing field. I know the business, they know IT and we can bring it together and make the right decisions between us and give the support we both want to give.”
The support they need, with the flexibility to adapt
HBTech’s tailored approach to co-managed IT meant that strukta could choose the level of support that they needed. As well as remote support, they wanted some on-site help, which Paul is able to direct to where it will be most useful.
“We began the contract with half a day per week onsite, so we would normally have someone from HBTech onsite in our head office to set up new laptops and deal with issues ‘hands on’. We are both flexible on the day and location, and we can ask someone to go to one of our Trade Stores if needed. As my project workload increased, we were able to ask HBTech to increase our support to 2 half days per week, giving better service to our employees across all locations. The arrangement is very flexible, and I can rely on someone being available from HBTech, regardless of leave, sickness etc.”
This bespoke package means that strukta can rely on cover that will always be there when they need it.
Where strukta previously had difficulty finding in-house personnel with the extensive IT knowledge their business required, they now rely on HBTech’s experts who cover a wide range of IT areas. “They’ve got experts in different things, which is where we were struggling before because nobody could be an expert in everything in IT these days, it’s just too big an area.”
Clear benefits
Once things were up and running, it didn’t take long for strukta to see the benefits. Paul says “beyond three months, the benefits were really clear and we were giving better service than we had done previously”
“It’s working very, very well, and I get nothing but good feedback from my people when they speak to the HBTech team.”
Paul says that strukta “are focused on finding good partners, and I consider HBTech to be a very good partner,” and he appreciates the fact that HBTech shares strukta’s commitment to excellent customer service “they understand the value of what it means to give good service… so that aligns very well with us… at the end of the day, we’re always selling a service.”
Paul shared that “I’ve definitely saved a lot of headaches and sleepless nights… As well as replacing the previous internal resource, HBTech are now taking on some of my strategic or advisory roles; we now have a team of people that are doing an excellent job and they’re always there. You can’t quantify it. It’s a feeling and it’s a confidence. If I went on leave for a month there wouldn’t be a problem. There’s nothing there that they can’t deal with, or they know who to speak to, to get it resolved. It would just happen, and that’s the confidence I need to know that they’ve got it and they can run with it”
Having HBTech on board also frees Paul up to focus on the higher level tasks he is responsible for “It’s more efficient, things are getting done quicker because jobs don’t need to wait for me…Otherwise, if I were working on a project, I would have to leave the project to deal with problems that came up, but that puts the business as a whole behind as the projects get behind… and those bigger things over time are the ones that will help our business and serve our customers… with more resources and more capability, less of my project work is getting delayed because I can just let HBTech deal with those problems if I need to. That’s where the benefits come… I get to be a lot more strategic, which is what the business wants me to be.”
If your business needs flexible IT support tailored to your needs, find out how a bespoke co-managed service could lighten your daily load – Contact us.
