IT SUPPORT FOR BUSINESS CENTRES:

Doherty Associates' flexible IT support solutions surpass expectations.

“I’ve had a great experience working with everyone at Doherty, from the front line people who answer the calls, to our account manager, to all the technical staff. They are like a big extended family. It’s been a pleasure.”

Making IT work
Pasley Tyler is the company that manages 42 Berkeley Square and the associated buildings that make up a private business centre designed to facilitate trade and diplomacy. Most of the clients that make use of the centre’s facilities are international and without offices in London, so they use the House as a home away from home. The IT infrastructure within the building must therefore be top class to support the business activities of the various members around the clock.

When Petra Foscolos first commenced work as a management accountant at Pasley Tyler, she realised that the Company’s IT needed work. A two-man IT supplier was supporting their staff, however the service was “break-fix” rather than proactive, and on multiple occasions when severe problems arose, the supplier was unable to fix them.

As Petra reports, “We used to ring them to say that something wasn’t working and they would say “well, it should be” and it wouldn’t get resolved. For instance, my emails were taking 3 hours to get to my inbox, but they kept trying to convince me there was nothing wrong.”

Petra decided to ask Doherty Associates to conduct a complete Healthcheck of their systems to see what the problem was. The results showed that there was no network infrastructure in place and that the server had not been maintained satisfactorily. The healthcheck engineer recommended a range of changes that would offer Pasley Tyler improved structure and reliability.

“Though we realised we needed help, we felt hesitant about switching to Doherty, because we are generally quite nervous about using new companies. We engaged them on a trial basis to support our existing systems, which enabled us to see how they worked. It was great to feel that they totally understood what was wrong, as well as the impact that the various issues were having on the business. As soon as our trial period finished, we signed up to an annual support contract, because they’d really proved themselves and we knew it would be a sound investment.”

Supporting the Centre
In addition to supporting the twenty members of staff within Pasley Tyler’s offices, Doherty Associates has also been engaged by several of the other companies that are based permanently within the business centre, thanks to recommendations by the staff at Pasley Tyler. They can call the Doherty helpdesk whenever they need IT support and are put straight through to an engineer who can assist.

Petra can now be sure that whenever a problem is reported, it will be dealt. “The majority of the time the engineers can sort out the problem straight away, or else you know it’s being resolved or that someone’s working on it. The guys often stay late to get things done – I’ve had emails from them at midnight!”

For Petra, one of the most helpful things about Doherty Associates is that the engineers adapt to their users. This is especially important in a business centre made up of companies with differing demands, as well as users with a wide range of technical skills. “They can communicate with people at the top technical level, but they can also come down to my level and even lower. With some people they can say “this is what you need to do” and with others they need to get on the systems and quickly do the job for them. That’s what a good IT company should do - know their clients.”

Also as part of their contract, the technical team at Doherty Associates liaises with the building’s third party suppliers, acting - in effect - as a one-stop shop for all the Company’s IT issues. For instance, when the Company changed over to a new internet service provider and found that the line speed was only half what it should have been, Doherty Associates put pressure directly on the provider to ensure it was fixed. Similarly, when there were problems with a Microsoft server and subsequently a HP printer card, Doherty Associates’ helpdesk contacted the manufacturers and organised callouts.

Online Backup
Pasley Tyler manages three buildings. Using tapes to backup the servers in each of them proved to be time consuming and inconvenient. In addition, the Company was required to store the backup tapes offsite in order to comply with insurance provisions, but the Chief Executive was concerned about confidentiality issues that might have arisen were staff members to take the tapes home with them.

The Company therefore signed up to the Doherty Live Vault service, which is powered by Iron Mountain. It is so effective that Petra now makes more use of the backups than she did before. “We’ve had a few instances where someone has accidentally deleted something. It’s so easy to restore the data - much more so than going to the server and putting a tape in. I just phone up Doherty and say “I need a backup from this time, on this date” and they find it for me almost immediately. And the solution is very cost effective.”

Mimecast
Doherty Associates recommended Mimecast’s email service to Pasley Tyler to alleviate spam and to improve their disaster recovery plan. Petra found that the service brought other benefits when, on one occasion, it prevented a legal battle for charges that were being claimed by a supplier. She had sent an email to their domain registrar to cancel one of their domains, but had not received a return ticket to confirm receipt of it and the registrar refused to accept the notice of cancellation. Petra called the helpdesk and explained which address the email had been sent to and when. Doherty Associates then produced a report showing that the email had, in fact, been received by the registrar’s service provider.

As far as Petra is concerned, the gamble of switching IT companies has paid off. “I rave about Doherty. Improving our IT was the first project I embarked on when I started here and everything has gone smoothly thanks to them. It’s one of the main things I can say I’ve achieved for Pasley Tyler.”