Xcede were currently in the process of a landmark merger and acquisition process that would bring several large brands together within one group of companies, they were looking for a partner to work with that would deliver technology that was able to support this process and the growth that entailed. Urban was appointed to lead this transformation and to design a strategic plan to bring the firms together and support the teams across the globe. They were recommended to Urban Network, the award-winning Outsourced IT Solution Provider.

Business Challenge

Urban was appointed to lead this transformation and to design a strategic plan to bring the firms together and support the teams across the globe. The onboarding process started with the Urban Network team assessing Xcede’s current IT environments and performing a GAP analysis of the entire organisation. The resulting report gives an exact status of the infrastructure in place, the strengths and weaknesses within it.

The transformation was required to be an efficient and smooth process, with an all-round, ongoing support plan in place for when the firms were merging, all across the globe.

Strategic Plan – To carry out a project on such a global scale, a plan was required to cover every aspect of the transformation. Ensuring a smooth transition, making sure each individual firm was correctly supported before and during the merge.

Ongoing Support – Ultimately your IT systems exist to deliver a capability to your staff. It’s the staff, and what they can do using the systems that actually create value for your business. Our goal is to be the single point of contact for your people, engage with them and communicate regularly to help them understand and exploit the IT capabilities you give them.

• Backup & Business Continuity – Due to the always available needs of the business, downtime would have a massive negative impact on the lives of the businesses customers. As a result, it is essential that the access to Xcede services is uninterrupted, hence the need for robust backup and disaster recovery solutions to ensure the business continuity plan could be carried out efficiently.
• Security & Compliance – As a business in a highly-regulated industry, Xcede need to protect their client data with an enterprise-level solution that not only meets the most challenging compliance policy but also delivers high levels of protection from modern cyber threats and breaches.

The customer at a Glance

Xcede Limited have specialist teams to recruit the full digital lifecycle from designing, developing, engineering and integrating platforms, to the acquisition and retention of customers, all of the way to the analysis, prediction and insight required to make winning business decisions.

Industry – International Recruitment Agency

Size – 200+ users

Locations – 10 Worldwide

Website – Xcede.co.uk

The Solutions

Urban Network proposed a fully “Managed Services” solution for Xcede for the transformation. Offering a multi-layered approach to service, delivering a 24/7 Helpdesk facility for a single point of contact for any support request, a Technical Back-office team actively monitoring and remediating any alerts that may arise, and a Professional Services team for all onsite needs. All requests or alerts are managed end-to-end, including third-party management through to resolution and within defined service levels. This ownership of incidents allows Xcede to concentrate on developing their own business rather than having to worry about maintaining IT systems during and after the transformation.

To ensure the best onboarding experience possible, Urban Network provided Xcede with a detailed checklist and agreed time frame that covered all essential actions until the go-live date. Regular meetings were scheduled with onboarding engineers, account managers and Xcede’s leadership team.

Business Results

The successful, international merge is a key result for Xcede. They are now in full support rollout to the other two-thirds of the company.

Xcede is now able to rely on:

• Business Intelligence on all aspects of the IT environment

• Combination of ‘best of breed’ vendors delivering Enterprise security, fully managed to the endpoint Web with web browsing control

• Increase business efficiency by aligning IT to business objectives

• Automation of major software vendor security updates to ensure compliance where needed

• Access to IT expertise and the advantages of the latest technologies on-demand

• Regular IT reviews and consultation

With the delivery of the initial strategic plan, to the highly successful international merge, Urban Network is now able to work with Xcede to provide ongoing support to the entire organisation, with a prompt speed of service, extensive security services and a trusting level of reliability.

“They have been well priced and well placed, they’ve built a really good working relationship with all of the team and overhauled everything. Very confident in what they have done for them and they’re now beginning to roll out support from Urban across the other two-thirds of the company.”