“The secure communications are very easy to use and the whole package is a real hit with our teams. ramsac has been on hand to manage the operational distribution of security software to new consultants and to resolve any issues which have arisen.”
Graham Nixon, Co-Founder, Nixon, Brooke & Co Ltd
Specialist strategic IT Consultants NixonBrooke was founded in 2001 and focuses on strategic and management issues for clients. These are typically large multinational companies in business sectors with a high dependency on IT - including Finance, Consumer Products, Retail and Central Government.
NixonBrooke prides itself on using the latest up to date technology to deliver excellent levels of service to its clients. With much of its work being project based, NixonBrooke builds its team from employees and associates, to match each specific client need. The dynamic nature of teams and projects, based at multiple client sites, demanded a web-based document and reference data management system, to facilitate these activities.
Whilst NixonBrooke concentrates on the strategic IT needs of its clients, the company outsources its own IT operations to ramsac, a specialist IT outsourcing consultancy based in Surrey. ramsac helps NixonBrooke to meet all its IT needs and worked closely to investigate possible solutions for the specific communications requirements of users. Working jointly, they concluded that a Microsoft SharePoint portal could be a valuable part of the solution. A pilot project was run in the early months of 2008 and then rolled out to all consultants, both employees and associates.
Graham Nixon, Co-Founder of NixonBrooke comments, “one of the major strengths of SharePoint is that it has allowed us to create a specific client site for each project. This restricts access to each site only to those members of staff who are directly involved with that client. The flexibility of SharePoint means that some users can be assigned a limited number of project sites, whilst senior members of the management team have wider access.”
ramsac also commissioned a secure virtual private network (VPN) which uses a mix of hardware and software encryption to ensure that all transmissions are secured, from a consultant’s laptop to NixonBrooke’s servers, wherever the consultant is located. By using 3G cards, WiFi links, or client wireless networks, consultants can work anywhere in the world, accessing their team files across the web, as if they were directly connected to the NixonBrooke servers.
SharePoint gives NixonBrooke consultants access to a range of different tools including bulletin boards, project calendar and shared files – providing central document management across the company’s network. As well as eliminating the need to email documents, the portal allows teams to share files and access reference material, increasing efficiency and speeding up analysis & reporting. It also provides version control & change histories and facilitates working to NixonBrooke’s ISO 9001 standards. Because data is stored centrally, in a secure environment, it eliminates the risk of losing important client data through damage to, or loss of, a laptop.
“Our consultants are a pretty demanding bunch when it comes to IT services, but SharePoint has given us the flexibility to develop the portal to match our pattern of working and to evolve it as we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. The secure communications are very easy to use and the whole package is a real hit with our teams. ramsac has been on hand to manage the operational distribution of security software to new consultants and to resolve any issues that have arisen.
The project has given us the confidence to move on into our next development, for the wider use of encryption throughout our IT infrastructure. Again, we are working closely with ramsac on this one as well.”