IT Management
IT Management from a Managed IT Service Provider
CubeNox is a full-service Managed Service Provider, helping clients move beyond workstation support and integrating IT strategy, management and planning. For many clients, managing their technology suppliers and services proves to be time consuming and administratively troublesome.
When troubleshooting Business IT issues, even with an internal team, businesses have to contend with several services which could be the root cause of problems, during which the various providers will have to be consulted and liaised with in order to diagnose the issue fully if at all.
For example, the simple sending of an email could be a hardware issue, software issue, email provider issue, internet service provider issue or a user error. Negotiating through these options and providers and narrowing down the possibilities can be extremely time consuming which is where CubeNox can step in to assist.
CubeNox provides clients with a value-added service where clients are provided with consulting, management, direction and planning services for their IT and technology services and providers. In this way we can take the hassle out of IT management for our clients.
We call this our “Holistic Approach”, where we take care of all of our clients’ services under the CubeNox umbrella, helping clients to manage and improve on their services throughout their organisation.
Cloud Services
As businesses adopt more cloud services to perform their daily tasks and move away from centrally, or individual machine, based applications, keeping track of these can cause organisations pain.
CubeNox keeps a record of these services for clients as well as (where possible) managing the provision and support of these, This allows clients to go about their business without the overhead of managing their numerous services and suppliers with the peace of mind that their IT partner is taking care of that.
Planning
For the majority of small to medium sized businesses IT services and systems are adopted after they are necessary, impeding progress while these changes are implemented, hardware is configured and new processes are adopted to fit the new model of business.
CubeNox’s client liaisons work with clients to plan out their future IT need, aligning this with their business goals and growth to ensure that potential spend and impacts on business are accounted for.
This allows clients to focus back on their business, while CubeNox focuses on supporting and managing their IT.
IT Consultancy
Awareness of trends in IT and computing is growing among the average users. Common phrases, technologies and services are well known but in some cases misunderstood or incomprehensible.
Knowing what technologies, services or products to bring into your business can be difficult, identifying the benefits and implications of these can take a great deal of time and effort for normal business users.
CubeNox assist clients by consulting with them on relevant services and looking into improvements and new systems to advise on the most appropriate and effective solutions for them.
These consultancy sessions align with the planning service and form a core element of the Service Review Meetings between the key decision makers within the client’s business and the Client Liaison.
IT Procurement
CubeNox recommends and provides hardware for clients based on years of experience and understanding of client needs. Hardware provided by CubeNox will be fit for purpose for its entire lifecycle and fully supported by CubeNox Engineers should the worst happen.
CubeNox’s rigorous supplier vetting ensures that a consistent high quality of service is provided to CubeNox and clients.
As such, to expedite hardware procurement CubeNox will have an agreed “minimum specification” of devices agreed with clients at the commencement of the agreement with flexibility to upgrade the specifications for individuals whose job demands an improved performance from their hardware.
CubeNox recommend planned hardware refreshes to ensure maximum efficiency and capability of hardware. CubeNox work with our clients to instigate a “rolling replacement program” to anticipate hardware costs and budget for replacement on a regular basis.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
At CubeNox, we help clients understand the impact of business outages and incidents ranging from individual users’ absences to site-wide power loss or damage.
The average cost of an hour of downtime in a 2014 Gartner report comes in at a minimum of £75,000 on average for large companies. For small to medium enterprises (SMEs) the non-financial impact can be much more devastating; costing customers, impacting on services and damaging reputations.
For this reason:
- Many of our services are “hybrid” approaches to solution building with physical assets and “cloud” based assets working in tandem to achieve the desired results.
- Remote working is a strong consideration when implementing new working practices and services.
- Redundant internet connections are recommended to mitigate loss or failure, always with business SLAs in place.
Many businesses fail to consider IT incidents or impacts in their Business Continuity Planning, assuming that “business as usual” can be achieved without preparation.
As part of our IT Management we sit down with clients to ensure a robust strategy is devised and updated resulting in prepared businesses able to recover from incidents and continue business within minutes, not hours.
IT Director As A Service
For most SMEs IT falls under the remit of a manager or director whose primary focus is another area of the business. IT regularly falls under the responsibility of Finance Directors whose primary drive is to ensure that IT does not become a “black hole” of funding. For this reason, IT investment is regularly passed over, in favour of revenue generating departments.
Dedicating resource specifically to IT Direction can be hugely beneficial to the business however, as IT then becomes an anticipated cost and time saving mechanism with the right approach. IT measures, tools and policies can also help reinforce or implement key strategic policies for the business. IT security also affects the business as a whole and without Direction, companies may not realise where the most effective return on investment can come from.
CubeNox assist clients with IT Director As A Service, where a dedicated Virtual IT Director will liaise at board level to ensure IT is adequately considered, invested in and responsible throughout the business.
CubeNox’s IT Director As A Service helps:
- Define and Execute a clear, effective IT Strategy
- Budget IT Spend based on the IT Strategy and historical spend
- Design appropriate infrastructure
- Ensure quality, secure applications are implemented throughout the business
- Identify, Design and Implement IT policies throughout the business
- Project Manage
- Manage Suppliers
- Ensure Technology compliance throughout the organisation
Managed IT Support
We utilise best-in-class IT technology and professionals to audit your current systems, infrastructure and software. This information forms the basis of the initial agreement of support. Our Client Liaison will then work with your key decision makers to devise a long-term roadmap for our businesses.
Our Helpdesk is available to clients for remote support as well as on-site engineers being available should clients require physical presence at their premises.
For more details about IT support click below.