Case Studies

Nigel Peach, Active Electronics

Active Electronics Plc is a distributor of electronic components and has been trading since the mid-70s. Headquartered in High Wycombe, the company has an annual turnover of £13.6million and customers include British Aerospace, Westland, Thales, Airbus, Boeing and the Ministry of Defence.

Active Electronics employs fifty people in its High Wycombe facilities - an office and warehouse and where its core competence is the procurement, sales, kitting and logistics support of electronic components and assemblies.

Active Electronics initially commissioned EPOQ IT in 2002 to provide support for their PC and printer management, and when a few years later they needed a replacement main server, Active Electronics asked EPOQ IT for a competitive quote.

Nigel Peach is the company’s Financial Controller, responsible for Finance & IT within Active Electronics. He explains: "EPOQ’s staff know our system well and good relationships have been built up over the years. Since 2002 when they provided maintenance cover for our PCs and printers, they have supplied, installed and maintained a number of servers for us as well as recommending software and applications to ensure that our systems are working to their potential. EPOQ IT acts as our own IT department and we appreciate the expertise of the EPOQ IT team to help us out.”

“Response times are very good and we have rarely had to wait for them for very long to attend to our needs. Certainly if our system is ever down, our experience is that they act immediately to get us back up and running as soon as possible. We’re very happy with them. It’s very useful that they provide advice for non-IT experts like ourselves. We’ve been impressed that we can phone up and speak to someone directly about a query and if they can’t give an answer on the spot they come back to us very quickly with the relevant details.”

David Abbott, David Abbott & Partners

Marlow-based David Abbott and Partners provides Executive Recruitment services to blue-chip companies in the technology, media and business services sectors.

Clients include Apple, Logica, Fremantle Media and Veolia and the Company’s success is based on a consistently high level of repeat business - often from candidates who subsequently choose to become clients.

David Abbott, Managing Director says: “We believe success in recruitment requires knowledge of a client’s market and an understanding of the position to be filled, underpinned by a methodical, thorough set of processes. In our twenty years of operation we’ve learned that integrity, confidentiality and reliability are paramount. Those are also the qualities we seek in our partners as we deal in a small number of highly valuable projects and it is essential that each and every one of our business processes support us completely.”

EPOQ IT has worked with David Abbott & Partners for eight years. David Abbott explains: “We’ve always been impressed by the EPOQ IT team’s work ethic and have been delighted by their good customer service attitude. Our business requirements are not particularly ‘technology heavy’ but EPOQ IT will always answer anything we want to know and we get regular calls to check how we’re doing and what may be changing within our business. Whenever we’ve asked a question, for instance about which Blackberry would work best for us, we’ve always been well advised.”

When David Abbott & Partners moved offices in Marlow at the beginning of last year, EPOQ IT seamlessly managed the whole project over the Christmas and New Year period. Abbott comments: “It was fabulous when we moved as EPOQ just assumed the whole management of the project to transfer our IT over. We literally walked out of the old office before Christmas and walked into our new office in the New Year and it was business as usual. They knew us well enough to ensure that everything was where it needed to be and also managed our telecoms provider who was not quite as on the ball as they were.”

“The EPOQ IT team is flexible and responsive and you don’t tend to expect that from IT suppliers. The level of personal service and trust that they maintain with us is excellent. I’m pretty fussy and the service levels we’ve experienced have exceeded my expectations - EPOQ IT is head and shoulders above our previous service provider.”

Shabbir Hussain, Grunenthal UK Limited

Grunenthal is a privately owned, research driven, international pharmaceutical company which focuses on pain management. Founded shortly after the second world war the company was the first in West Germany to receive a licence to manufacture penicillin on a large scale. Now employing over 4,800 people in 16 countries around the world, the company set up Grunenthal UK Limited in 2005 to support its UK & Ireland markets.

EPOQ IT has worked with Grunenthal UK Limited since its formation in 2005 providing first line support to the company’s UK field-based staff and helping the in-house IT team with specific projects such as roll-outs.

Shabbir Hussain joined Grunenthal UK in February 2008 as Network Manager and has worked closely with EPOQ IT on a range of activities. He says: “EPOQ IT has been invaluable in the support they’ve provided to me. From addressing first line support calls from our 50 field based users to supporting me on specific projects such as server builds and planned roll-outs they’re truly a part of our team.”

Shabbir has grown his own team and head-count but he buys ‘EPOQ IT Days’ for additional support as and when its required: “EPOQ IT support our 12-strong team in Ireland but they’re also available to help the UK Head Office I.T. team in Stokenchurch when we need them, as our company head-count is around 120 strong and growing. I consider EPOQ IT as part of my team rather than a third party supplier. I know them very well and they have so much pharmaceutical knowledge they offer great insight into the workings of a company such as ours. They’ve been trained at our Global Head Office in Germany to a Galileo standard of support so they can just walk in and know exactly what to do.”

More recently EPOQ IT handled a migration for Grunenthal UK while the entire UK team was at a company conference in Germany in May 2009. Gary Swanwick, Director, EPOQ IT explains: “Grunenthal uses a standard Windows image on all its computers which is developed and released by the German Head Office. When there is a new image release all UK computers and laptops need to be updated, so in this instance we backed up each machine, rebuilt it with the latest image and then restored each user’s data. When everyone returned the roll-out was done and they had all the information they were used to.”

Shabbir adds: “The best thing about working with EPOQ IT is that they supported me on the UK helpdesk while I was building and training my in-house team. I rate their customer service pretty highly as they always add the personal touch and are available to help as required without being too formal about the process. I’m happy to keep them in the loop with what we’re doing as they can add so much value - their historic knowledge is really beneficial and helpful for us.”

Marieme Ba, Pharmalys

Pharmalys UK is a Clinical Research Organisation (CRO) based near London. The company provides the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries with tailor-made clinical trial services, contributing to the discovery of new drugs and the improvement of health and wellbeing.

With over 30 years of combined experience in clinical operations within the pharmaceutical industry, Pharmalys UK has extensive expertise across a wide range of therapeutic areas with particular interest in the areas of pain management, cardiology, oncology, respiratory diseases, metabolic disorders, urology, gene therapy, gynaecology, infectious diseases and paediatric medicine.

Marieme Ba, Managing Director of Pharmalys UK explains: “At Pharmalys, we constantly scan the horizon for innovation and we dedicate a great deal of time to exploring more productive and cost-effective ways of completing clinical trial projects for our clients. Our multilingual clinical team has co-ordinated international trials involving most European countries and using state of the art technologies such as electronic data capture, Interactive Voice Response Systems and Clinical Trial Management Systems. Each of our pharmaceutical clients is very demanding with regard to data security and reliability of communications so having EPOQ IT supporting us is fabulous.”

Ba, continues: “I knew EPOQ IT from my previous employment and people were very happy with their work there. Two years ago I set up Pharmalys’s UK office and for cost reasons we used another provider for our IT support. However, I knew that EPOQ IT worked with a number of other pharmaceutical clients and because the team has experience of working in this highly regulated area we believed we could only benefit from their experience in the pharmaceutical sector and transferred our IT support contract to them in January 2010.”

Pharmalys’ key criteria for its IT support included: in-depth knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry; understanding of the required validation of the Pharmalys IT systems; relevant experience with medium sized pharmaceutical companies; and a reputation for reliability.

Pharmalys moved offices earlier this year to new premises in Borehamwood just outside London. Ba comments: “When we decided to move premises, EPOQ IT gave us advice and recommendations and interacted with our other providers to ensure the move went smoothly. The EPOQ IT team’s work with us on our move was exceptional and we experienced limited disruption.”

EPOQ IT liaised with the Pharmalys team members to move laptops, desktops and a server to the company’s new offices. Over the move weekend EPOQ IT then set up the network and configured devices so that everything was available for business as usual on the Monday after the move.

Ba concluded: “EPOQ IT is always available and easy to reach. The company offers very good customer service and we have benefited from their speedy response times. They are an excellent team with an impressive amount of expertise and we have a very good relationship with them.”

Julie Mace, Platinum Resourcing UK Limited

Platinum Resourcing UK Limited was founded in May 2000 to provide a professional and personalised recruitment service to companies in the Thames Valley.

The Marlow-based company’s philosophy combines traditional values and first class customer service which, coupled with the latest technology, has earned Platinum Resourcing UK the respect of its many clients.

Julie Mace, Managing Director says: “We focus on office-based recruitment and have clients right across the board - from single entrepreneurs to international corporations. Geographically we focus on clients within a 15-mile radius of Marlow and Windsor.”

EPOQ IT has worked with Platinum Resourcing UK for eight years. Julie explains: “We’ve always been impressed by the EPOQ IT team’s work ethic and have been delighted by their good attitude. They provide us with software and hardware support for six workstations in our Marlow office and liaise with our recruitment database supplier. The best thing about EPOQ IT is that they know us and if someone knows you, your business and your systems, that counts for an awful lot.”

“We have a very standard requirement and we just need it to work! EPOQ IT has given us the support and ideas we need to stay operationally effective - they know everything has to be compatible with our recruitment database.”

Julie adds: “We have used EPOQ IT from day one and have found them easy to deal with, both in person and on the telephone and they always respond to us quickly. We’re not very IT literate, so EPOQ IT has always explained things in ways that could be understood. This has really made the upkeep of our computer systems a lot easier.”

Daniel Robinson, Systagenix

Systagenix Wound Management is a global company with over 700 employees worldwide. Formed in December 2008 when Johnson & Johnson sold its professional wound care business to private equity company One Equity Partners, Systagenix is headquartered at Gatwick Airport in West Sussex with a manufacturing facility in North Yorkshire.

When the company acquired the Johnson & Johnson advanced wound care division it inherited a European sales force and consequently set up ten offices in Europe, Middle East and Africa to service the 250 new employees. Daniel Robinson, Head of IT Technical Services, Systagenix explained: “As part of the acquisition we had to set up offices across Europe and provision them with new equipment. We knew the EPOQ IT team and commissioned them to assess what was out there and work with the local sales managers to define the IT requirements for each of the new offices.”

“The EPOQ IT team worked with our various new sites for three months to ensure that they had essentially everything they needed - from internet connectivity, to local networks and printing. Everything went very well and the transition to the new offices by EPOQ IT was handled on time and on budget.”

Since this initial project Systagenix has regularly worked with EPOQ IT and Robinson concludes: “The EPOQ IT team offers a fine service and we’re happy to depend on them for their support as and when we need it.”