Keeping Safesite’s IT safe

“By having ramsac actively involved at board level, we are able to successfully identify, understand and capitalise on synergies between Safesite’s business strategy and its investment in IT.”
Marketing Director of Safesite, Graham Willmott

If you are a growing business with a reputation and client list that would be the envy of any large enterprise, you need to ensure that every part of the organisation is focused on performing to its optimum capability. Safesite is such a business.

The leading provider of roof safety equipment, Safesite works with the Royal Household, the British Embassy, GlaxoSmithKline and Volkswagen, as well as hospitals, football stadiums and theatres across the UK and Ireland, to reduce the number of serious injuries and fatalities that are the result of working at height. As with any modern business, the capabilities of its IT systems are inextricably linked to its ongoing success. Marketing Director at Safesite, Graham Willmott is quite convinced of its importance to his company: “We have a huge requirement for IT. Without it the business would grind to a halt.”

Continual investment in facilities, systems, procedures and professionally qualified staff means that Safesite is able to ensure continual product innovation and quality assurance. However, despite a team of 42 people, not one member of staff was entirely focused on maintaining Safesite’s IT operations. It was decided to address this issue and specialist IT outsourcing consultant, ramsac, was invited to review the IT requirement at Safesite.

ramsac’s initial audit of the IT infrastructure in place at the Safesite head-office in Crawley, Surrey, revealed a common problem. The technology was right for the business, but the implementation was not adequate. Without any dedicated internal IT expertise, the decision was made to entrust the entire function to ramsac, incorporating the management of Safesite’s Microsoft-based network (including both hardware and software), anti-spam, content filtering, security, helpdesk and management of its in-house designed customer relationship management database.

“From our initial meetings with ramsac it was clear that the team there understood our business and could provide us with a service that was flexible enough to grow as Safesite develops, able to adapt as our IT needs changed,” comments Willmott. It was this flexibility that proved so effective when Safesite decided to expand and open an office in Runcorn, Cheshire.

To ensure that both offices could communicate effectively, ramsac specified and installed a Citrix network, allowing DOS and Windows programs as well as the Telemagic database to be securely run across the Internet. The benefit to Safesite was that the main IT infrastructure could continue to be managed at Crawley, with users in Runcorn logging in to low-cost ‘dumb terminals’ to access the network. Willmott adds, “The new office had an existing server and rather than dispose of it, ramsac removed and reassigned it a new role in our head-office. This provided our network with greater capacity at no extra cost to us.”

With the head-office in Crawley, a new northern office and an increasing number of surveyors and engineers visiting client sites around the country to conduct evaluations and installations, it was essential that everyone could have access to vital information required, regardless of location.  By giving every member of staff a secure login, the Citrix network could be quickly accessed via the web browser of a laptop or PC. “This new mobile working approach saves valuable time, as it means our surveyors are able to complete their reports immediately without having to wait until they are next in the office,” explains Willmott.

As well as day-to-day management, ramsac provides board level direction in the form of an outsourced IT Director. This Director, a senior member of the ramsac team, participates in supplier meetings and Safesite board meetings to identify areas for improvement, where IT can be aligned with ongoing business requirements. So when the issue of information management arose, the ramsac IT Director was on hand to advise how IT could resolve the issue.

“We were sending and receiving very large important documents, such as CAD drawing of projects and site photographs via post and email,” Willmott explains. “This presented a logistical problem when any number of people involved in the project were editing files, often resulting in duplicate versions of the same file in existence.”

As Citrix had been so successful in connecting the two offices together and enabling mobile working, ramsac recognised an innovative way in which it could be used to streamline the document management process. IT Director at Safesite and Managing Director of ramsac, Robert May explains, “We were able to create ‘locked folders’ on the Safesite network for each of its clients. Accessed via the Safesite website, authorised people logon to a secure area and can view and amend documents, however we restricted the ability to copy files by disabling the clipboard, to ensure the master document was the only one available.”

“This process has enabled us to control the movement of information much more effectively,” explains Graham Willmott. “It is a perfect example of how, by having ramsac actively involved at board level we are able to successfully identify, understand and capitalise on synergies between Safesite’s business strategy and its investment in IT.”