Video transcript
I'm Stephen Cowlin from the Richard Stephens Partnership. We’re mechanical and electrical building services design consultants, and we help work with projects predominantly in the health care sector but also laboratories and clean rooms.
(Q: What made you think 'we need to change our IT setup'?)
A: In, I think it was 2016, we suffered a hack, a phishing attack. We lost all of our server data and had to go through quite a lot of disruption to the business. That did impact us for quite a long time. And it just felt like a change of direction.
(Q: Before PS Tech, what did a 'bad IT day' look like for your team?)
A: Even things like, the way that our subscriptions were managed and, software licensing, new starts, everything was quite chaotic and reactive. We never really felt that we were in control of it. Which meant that there's more management time lost every time one of those events happened.
(Q: What is the biggest difference PS Tech has made to you?)
A: I think it’s just the personal approach to how they, talk to us about what our target outcomes are, so, making as aware of what options we've got. So we've been through server replacements for example. But obviously a big conversation around that was the outlying cost for replacement compared to investment in migrating over to SharePoint.
Being guided by Paul and the team in how we go about procuring, new equipment and staying on top of, the market trends has been really important to us.
(Q: How did you approach migrating to Microsoft Cloud and 365?)
A: Historically, there's been some resistance from the management in terms of, the cloud and security around that. But really with everything, being far more secure and the reassurances that PS Tech provided, that became a no brainer when you compare it to the capital investment in servers and obviously the running costs and maintenance associated with that, which was all clearly explained, to us and really was just down to the communication and the collaborative approach to to putting that project together.
And again, the reassurance that we got when we were doing the switch over and the migration work, so we knew exactly what was happening and could manage the team. There was very little downtime in terms of business, with works carried out over weekends. And daily syncs from the server over to the new site so that it was really a just a flick of a button, so that we switched over on a Monday morning and were ready to go in the new environment. And PS Tech provided on site help that morning and throughout that first couple of weeks as well set up the whole team were reassured and confident with them. That they knew how the SharePoint sites were going to sync with OneDrive, and basically changed nothing to them as front end users, but you know, obviously in the background, everything had been migrated across successfully.
(Q: How has remote working changed for your team?)
A: We, are not just office based. We have to go and visit construction sites and carry out surveys, and, a lot of that relies on photographic, evidence and records. It relies on being able to access drawings, design drawings or files whilst we were out and about. So the SharePoint cloud solution has meant that we can use the One Drive app across, approved devices.
All of our engineers also have a tablet. So that and their mobile device is all managed by PS Tech, have access to OneDrive, which means that we can access all of our files that are saved in the, SharePoint environment. And, yeah, bring up things on demand wherever we are, as long as we've got an internet connection.
(Q: What are the biggest savings you have made since upgrading?)
A: In terms of, a server replacement cost, we, you know, we're looking at tens of thousands of pounds of investment to upgrade the server. And we know that was a repeating cost. So the investment in the SharePoint migration was really a one off cost. Yes, some of our subscription costs will have slightly increased. But that investment will pay dividends over a longer period of time because, we're not going to have that regular upgrade of the server, you know, every 5 to 7 years, as equipment becomes and the life.
(Q: How would you describe working with PS Tech?)
A: Reaction times with, with any new tickets is very fast, and you've usually got a regular team of people that you can contact to address those issues and all in a friendly professional manner as well. So it's just having all of that constantly, like I say, it’s communication is the key, but you just have that reassurance by being kept informed and, yeah, knowing where you're going really.
We have regular touch points with the support team as well, so that we'll regularly review what's changing. Paul, explain to his why he's maybe changing some of the things in the background around the security. I mean, to me, I'm an engineer and managing my business, but you know, the detail around security is lost on me a little bit, beyond the basics. But being looked after by PS Tech, just gives that reassurance to know that we're in the right place without having to commit our own internal resources and being out of our comfort zone. So we're relying on experts.