The Challenge

Consortio Business Management were in the process of reviewing internal business efficiencies and needed increased flexibility whilst understanding the importance of ensuring their systems remained compliant as well as remaining secure.

Specifically Consortio BM were looking to:

• Increase flexibility for their workforce, enabling them to work from anywhere including client sites specifically relating to; Sending and receiving emails, accessing files and taking phone calls;
• Standardise infrastructure for all users depending on their role requirements. This would help improve the management of devices and improve efficiencies for users due to all systems following a standard format;
• Ensure the infrastructure and associated identities remain secure and meet best practice standards outlined by schemes such as the Governments Cyber Essentials;
• Improve communication between team members. Due to the work Consortio do it is very regular for consultants to be on clients sites for days, however it is important for them to retain communication with the head office.

The Solution

Our solution consisted of an array of services which would all be wrapped and managed by our IT Support (IT Managed Service) offering.

The initial challenge was to migrate the email and file services which were hosted locally to Microsoft’s cloud based Office 365 platform. This would enable users to access their emails and documents securely from an authorised company device.

Our next focus was on the phone system so that Consortio users had the true ability of working from anywhere. We opted for our Cloud Phone System solution which enabled staff members to make and receive calls from anywhere with a reliable internet connection.

With both Office 365 and our Cloud Phone System we successfully achieved our first goal in ensuring the Consortio BM team can work anywhere.

Next we tackled improving the standards of security. With the line of business Consortio is in security is paramount and with the introduction of GDPR it is not an option that can be avoided which Consortio understood.

Our initial focus was integrating a standardised environment so that users, depending on their role, had different devices but would all be running the same software to provide a uniform environment. This teamed with our IT Support service enabled us to centrally manage and administer devices rolling out regular software patches as well as central IT policies such as password, patching and monitoring policies.

To further improve security we rolled out our Managed Anti-Virus solution. This ensured that all systems were running our most advanced form of anti-virus which integrated AI to significantly reduce any chances of threats getting through.

Due to the sensitive nature of the business we also looked to integrate our Identity Theft Protection solution which monitored the Dark Web for any details associated to Consortio BM staff and customers to again further reduce the chances of a breach.

All systems are monitored 24/7 to ensure they are always running optimally and the team at Consortio BM have access to the service desk round the clock no matter where they are based should they have any questions or encounter any issues.

Having worked with Our IT Services since 2014, we have formed a client contractor relationship that is as good as that of a business partnership. We trust their integrity and advice and have been impressed on many occasions with their planning and execution of projects. On the rare instances when things may go amiss, we have been impressed with the swift response by the team and the implementation of solutions found.