The Trusted Partnership

These are unprecedented times …

It’s clear that now, more than ever, is a time for us all to work together and to help each other. It’s easy to see everyday examples of this in action, with the incredible dedication of key workers everywhere, the vast numbers of people volunteering to help, and the increased reliance on technology to adhere to social distancing regulations and manage isolation. During these times of hardship, we’ve all stepped up in our personal lives; why should you expect any different professionally?

Covid-19 has changed the way we all have to work, and with that has come a whole wave of challenges that are down to IT teams and technology to solve.

• Increased remote working & collaboration
• Increased support requests & inundation of support staff
• Improving security whilst the workforce is working remotely
• Financial strain

Having a trusted partner to call upon during these times has never been more important.

Our focus at Waterstons has always been client-intimate; we all passionately want what is best for our clients. We have always been interested in long term partnerships, and that means being there in good times and bad. Our services work on a scalable model; each solution is tailored specifically to our client’s needs. Our partnership approach, allied to our model of ensuring a customised ‘best-fit’ support solution, allows us to work openly and transparently with our clients, never shying away from telling the truth. And in times like this, it means we can be as flexible as you need us to be, up or down.

But how does this work?

This starts with our delivery team and leading from the front are our service managers, who are embedded in your business. Our service managers take ownership of the client’s IT service, build long term relationships with our clients, and get to know their business. Day to day, that allows us to offer continuous and comprehensive services, adapted specifically to their needs. This includes identifying and managing technology risks; pinpointing service improvement opportunities; regularly discussing technology changes or advances that may beneficially impact their business; and further tailor our services over time. Crucially, especially in times of extreme adversity, your service manager will already know what is critical to your business, can anticipate your needs and know how to realistically implement necessary measures. From there they act as the conduit to the wider Waterstons team, and if we’re not the right people, we’ll recommend other vendors, products or services that may address your particular complexities.

If you’ve got a time sensitive challenge, then our service managers can collaborate with members of all our other teams, offering a range of expertise. There’s a wealth of experience they can call on: our technology team has implemented many tools to help with remote working, communication and collaboration; our cyber experts can advise on best practice and securing your business with a remote workforce and an increase in BYOD; or our software team can help create a new system or link two solutions together with bespoke development for a really unique challenge. Because your service manager already knows the specifics of your business, together our teams can develop a streamlined approach, and offer a speedy solution, therefore expediting the delivery of the entire project.

The other key to our flexibility is our 24x7 service desk teams. Our experienced, technical service desk isn’t tiered and has a wide range of experience across many sectors and services. They’ll work together seamlessly to solve any issue that comes in, but whoever you speak to will own that issue through to resolution. If your support staff are inundated, then perhaps you just need some help clearing that backlog - we can call in more help to flex our service.

Our ethos is simple; we are here for our clients.

We moved to a 24x7 model so we could adjust to our clients’ needs. We have customers in Australia, so we’ve opened offices in Australia; they need support, so we provide it. That same principle applies whatever the driving factor.

The final key to our comprehensive service is that every one of our clients has a named client director, another voice offering different experience. Any one of our client directors would be more than happy to offer you their time and experience, whether you’re a new or existing client. Long-term relationships are important to us. We will deliver the same attentive service in good times and bad, and we won’t charge you if all you want is some advice or to be pointed to where you need to go.

Our key guiding principle is to add value; we don’t aim to just fix problems, shift boxes or generate recurring revenue by doing the bare minimum. Waterstons has been built on partnerships, honesty and trust; our support doesn’t change because times get tough.

It’s a challenging time, and the way to get through that is to work together, to rely on your trusted partners and to all come out the other side.