Business critical systems managed to ensure instant availability for consultants
Outsourcing saves JFL money while providing access to extensive IT resources
July 10, 2012 – Oncore IT, a cloud and IT managed services provider, today announced that it has signed a three year contract with specialist recruitment consultancy, JFL, to completely manage its whole outsourced IT function.
Oncore IT is providing JFL a range of IT services including: desktop, server, firewall and network infrastructure management, 24/7 monitoring, email anti virus and spam technology, SSL access for remote working, Blackberry Enterprise Server support, 250 GB of online back up, disaster recovery (DR), Internet connectivity and prepaid engineer time. This is all backed by service level agreements to ensure and guarantee IT availability.
Based in Soho, London, JFL is a specialist recruitment and search consultancy for the communications sector covering PR, corporate communications, public affairs and publishing. Founded in 1972, it employs 11 staff and is Investor in People rated and an approved corporate member of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation. In 2011, JFL placed 166 candidates in a range of companies including Cartier, Ernst & Young, the Financial Services Authority, Red Bull, Unilever, and key agencies such as Grayling, Hill & Knowlton, Manning Selvage & Lee, Ketchum Pleon and Weber Shandwick.
Ros Kindersley, JFL’s managing director, says, “We’re a small company without the capacity to hire a dedicated IT person. This means we just don’t have the technical knowledge in terms of what to buy nor the skills to support our equipment. Outsourcing to an expert made a lot of sense so as to free up consultants’ time rather than having our people fiddle around with computers.”
JFL first started working with Oncore IT in 2004, making the latest support contract the third to be signed between the two companies.
Kindersley explains, ”At that time, we spoke to three organisations and selected Oncore IT as they offered attentive account management and were the only firm to speak to us in a straight forward non-technical way when scoping our needs.”
As part of the new contract, Oncore IT has upgraded JFL’s hardware installing new PCs, servers, and firewall, while increasing its ADSL bandwidth capacity and shifting the business to the latest version of Microsoft’s Small Business Server. The new higher spec hardware also supports Bond Adapt, specialist software for the recruitment industry, the uptime of which is crucial to JFL’s business. It lists all candidates and their CVs, status in the recruitment cycle, vacancies to be filled while providing comprehensive search facilities so that people can be quickly matched to job opportunities available.
Kindersley says, “Oncore IT has performed really well. Every time we call the helpdesk, they respond politely and quickly either remotely or physically if that’s required.”
Outsourcing IT management to Oncore IT has meant access to broad team of IT professionals who are totally infrastructure focused, with JFL able to capitalise on these skill sets as well as the considerable investment made to locate in highly secure data centres to ensure a robust DR solution.
Kindersley concludes, “I am someone who doesn’t like changing suppliers but rather fostering a long term relationship with a company who provides a good service. Oncore IT does just that which means they understand our business well and we both know how to get the best out of working with each other.”
Paul Cook, Oncore IT’s head of sales and marketing, says, “For any company the size of JFL to be adequately provisioned you’re looking at someone with both infrastructure and application skills sets. And that might mean two people. With starting salaries in London of around £40k per head plus costs, outsourcing to a specialist like Oncore IT is a logical route to take. JFL saves money, punches above its weight in terms of IT purchasing power and solutions, plus there’s one point of contact for all IT related issues – us.”
