Andrews & Wykeham

Andrews & Wykeham chose ramsac to provide IT support to their offices including an international site, and to work on all IT projects and upgrades.

Who are Andrews & Wykeham?

Andrews & Wykeham are a quintessential English company located in the heart of Hampshire. Their aim is to provide a complete “trust channel” to their customers, supplying personal identification, vehicle identification, document security, product anti-counterfeit, excise revenue protection systems and holographic components enhancing the security of banknotes and government issued documents (forms, certificates, permits, diplomas etc.)
With extensive management experience in the world of International ID and security holography, they appreciate the demands and the sensitivities of this unique marketplace.

What prompted the move to ramsac?

Andrews & Wykeham had an existing support company. However, as they grew the support company were struggling to cope with their needs. Julia Metcalfe, Administration Manager at Andrews & Wykeham explained what prompted the move to ramsac “We had no regular visits from our existing support company, very little was documented, and the Relationship Manager was a Salesman, which meant that whenever we had an issue he would advise us to spend money on an upgrade.”

Julia continues “The contract we had charged for every call that was made, even when the issues were not resolved. If they had to spend any time at all trying to resolve something they charged by the minute, which was totally unsatisfactory because it was very difficult to work to a budget. All employees had to come to me with their issues and I had to phone the support company and log the call with a receptionist and then wait for someone to call me back, whenever they had time. They also had a very high turnover of staff which meant explaining the whole set-up to someone new each time we called in. They were very reactive, not at all proactive suggesting new ideas or products that could help us with our efficiency.”

Why ramsac?

The decision to choose a new IT provider is an important one, Julia Metcalfe discusses the steps Andrews & Wykeham took to appoint a new provider. “I did a lot of research to find a new support company that was not hundreds of miles away, so we could have regular support visits and I would have to spend less of my time on IT issues. I invited ramsac in to meet with them and was very impressed with their professionalism. They understood that I did not want, or indeed have the ability, to deal with all the IT problems but needed a support company that would take them away from me and manage the IT systems for me. I also liked the idea of an ‘all inclusive’ model, so I knew how much the support would be costing us and I could budget more accurately.”

IT projects

At the start of our working relationship, we undertook a major project, to migrate all the infrastructure to a new IT data centre. Julia commented “This transition went much more smoothly than I had anticipated and ramsac liaised directly with the previous company on many issues, rather than involving me too much. I find the staff at ramsac very pleasant and very helpful and will be working with them again on a major project at the end of this year.”

The benefits of working with ramsac

Andrews & Wykeham now benefit from improved stability of systems, as ramsac perform regular checks and out of hours updates. They have a regular visit from their Network Consultant and ramsac carry out 24/7 server monitoring, patching and VIP support for two of their users.
Julia explains the benefits “I have much more confidence in the recommendations that are made. I like the fact that I have a good working relationship with our Relationship Director, who I know I can go to if I have a real issue and they provide us with ongoing plans to ensure that IT is constantly developing and is properly budgeted for. We are not constantly being asked to spend additional money to try and rectify problems that might exist; they are examined properly before any solution is proposed. There are no hidden costs; everything is very open and documented. The biggest benefit to me personally is that I no longer manage the day to day IT, ramsac do it.”

“I would be very happy to recommend ramsac to other organisations. They are very professional and if I have any problems, then I speak to my Relationship Director who soon gets thing moving along for me.”

Julia Metcalfe, Administration Manager at Andrews & Wykeham