|
|
Water UK represents the privatised UK water and wastewater industry. It works with government regulators and stakeholder organisations to develop policy and improve understanding of the industry. Based in London 's St. James's, Water UK employs 21 people and supplies IT services both for its own use and 2 of its building's tenants. With 35 PCs to support, Water UK 's IT focus group could not justify having in-house IT staff. Ann Bull is Water UK 's Services Administrator: 'It would be too expensive for us to retain the expertise in-house - one person could not possibly have the knowledge to supply our needs. Two would be prohibitively expensive, even if we could find the right people.' Three year ago, Ann created an invitation to tender document and the focus group chose a supplier. Whilst it seemed like the best choice at the time, Ann, who had to bear the brunt of any problems, discovered that all IT outsource suppliers are not the same. 'The servers were always going down and the response when they did wasn't quick enough. It was particularly annoying since I had specifically asked for pro-active monitoring so this didn't happen. They were supposed to be able to provide that, but judging by the number of times our systems went down, they couldn't. Finally enough was enough and a year ago we went to tender again.' Ann says. 'Wavex were invited as a result of a personal recommendation.' Ann reviewed the responses to their tender document and asked four suppliers to present to the IT focus group. She claims that Wavex's presentation was 100% better than the others. What was the difference? 'The other guys were just salesmen. Anyone can do that. I wanted.we all wanted to see who would be doing the work. Remember, we'd just had a bad experience. 'We were also extremely impressed that Wavex could show the systems there and then - it wasn't just powerpoints and claims. It is also obvious that they have built their systems specifically to handle the issues I face every day. The icing on the cake was that they were also less expensive.' What is the situation today? Ann seems happy: 'I love the fact that they respond immediately. I can log calls through the extranet if I need to, but they're equally as fast if I just pick up the phone - I'm sure that the fact they foresee issues before they become problems is the key.' Any advice to those looking to go down this route? 'Make sure you meet the technicians, make sure they have enough people, and don't let them blind you with science - all most people want to know is that their systems will work. The technology to provide the service has to be there, but I don't think it helps anyone for this to shrouded in jargon.'
|
