Meet the Team – Managed Services

Oct 12, 2020 | Life at Quorum

National Work Life Week (12-16 October) is an opportunity for both employers and employees to focus on wellbeing at work and work life balance. Employers can use the week to provide activities for staff, and to showcase their flexible working policies and practices.

Like most companies around the globe, Quorum has had to make quick changes to our ways of working in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We have remained committed to providing the best possible care and service to our clients and trying to minimise the impact to their businesses at the same time as well as looking after the wellbeing of our employees.

Our Managed Services Team have been busier than ever during lockdown. So we spoke to a small selection of our Managed Services Team: Robson Sheret, Adam Fisher, Clinton Brayley, and Iain McLaren, to discuss how they’ve been affected over the past 6 months

Firstly, what is your title in Quorum and what do you do?

Robson: Service Desk Manager.

I oversee the service desk, ensuring a high-level service is maintained and all clients are satisfied. I manage daily operations, including schedules and escalations. As well as participating in root cause analysis and communicating findings to clients, I prioritise projects and identify goals, and help staff reach those goals.

Adam: IT Support Analyst

My role involves supporting our existing customers to ensure they get the best experience out of the solutions we maintain and provide. The role involves supporting our customers with incidents, maintenance, and continuous improvements, this can range from rebuilding servers to helping end users.

Clinton: Senior IT Analyst

I am part of the Quorum managed services team based at finance client office in London. Our team is responsible for the smooth and efficient running of all things IT.

Iain: Service Delivery Manager.

I, along with my team, look after the IT service and infrastructure for one of our clients in the legal industry. We provide them with a full outsourced IT solution allowing them to use the best tools to meet their business objectives and serve their own clients.

How has COVID-19 affected the managed services team?

Robson:

Working in Managed Services is always fast paced but now, it’s even more so. We are constantly adapting to new working processes that better suit our clients’ needs as they also deal with the effects of COVID-19. COVID-19 has fast tracked the digital transformation for many of our clients, IT strategies now need rethought, some 1- and 3-year plans have been implemented in just weeks. The Managed Services team are dealing with an exceptional rate of change.  This has also been used to our advantage to break away from the past by doing away with suboptimal old habits and systems. The openness and willingness for change has also allowed us to adopt new innovative processes, boosting overall productivity

Clinton:

After overcoming the initial challenges of getting our client working from home we have settled into a steady and positive working routine , we work collaboratively all day on a Teams call ,only dropping off the call to attend to incoming service desk requests or attend to other administrative tasks and  project based work.

Iain:

My team was based on our client’s site, pre-pandemic. The shift not only to working from home but to working remotely for the client has caused us to change the way we deliver the IT service and forced us to adapt to a different mindset. Communication has become largely email based, though we now have a few more Teams meetings allowing us to keep in touch with various people within the client organisation. The value of a face to face conversation, even remotely can never be underestimated. Remote and shadowing technology has been used to provide assistance to users when needed and this has proved invaluable. While these were all in place before the real change is that they have become the defaults in place of more face to face support.

How did the managed services team deal with the move to remote working?

Robson:

Managed Services quickly adapted to remote working, the Service Desk provided remote support already, now we do it from home. Much of the challenges have been around home working environments and ensuring the team maintain a healthy work life balance. An extended lunch break and new shift patterns were quickly introduced as the initial few weeks took their toll on the team who worked round the clock getting our clients off site. Some people have experienced different emotions and levels of happiness or unhappiness at different times, it’s been more important than ever that the team talk, and more regularly. Many are enjoying the new experience, we can still very much do our job, maybe even better. Virtual collaboration is working well and whilst it continues to grow and improve, so do we but until there is a replacement for those unplanned chats that we have when we go for a coffee or Friday drinks with colleagues, everyone still misses the working office.

Adam:

COVID-19 changed the way we work in the managed service team back in March as most of our clients were quickly looking for remote working solutions. We had to get these in place quickly with lockdown fast approaching. This also meant that the support we provided to our clients was primarily done remotely due to the COIVD restrictions. Internally within the team we have daily catchup calls to work through any issues we may be investigating as we are all currently working from home.  With most customers also working from home this has brought in new challenges to overcome for the team.

Clinton:

The Quorum team have taken the move to remote working in their stride, we have enjoyed supporting our user base remotely despite all the challenges and difficulties that this brings. In my opinion our client has enjoyed a nearly seamless transition to home working and I am proud to have been part of this team that has worked so hard to deliver this service.

Iain:

It might sound like a cliché, but the team was incredibly professional. We all worked closely together to identify solutions and increase the capacity of the existing remote work solutions, realising it was better to adapt what was there than implement completely untested solutions in short timescales. Once this was done additional solutions were identified to provide additional functionality, such as Microsoft Teams. But overall their ability to work together and focus on the tasks at hand delivered for the client at a time when it would have been easy to get lost in the unknown that was lockdown.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about what our Managed Services Team do, take a look here.

If you could benefit from our support, do not hesitate to get in touch at marketing@qnrl.com, 0131 652 3954, or our online contact form.

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Quorum Network Resources Ltd

18 Greenside Lane Edinburgh

UK EH1 3AH

Phone: +44 131 652 3954

Email: marketing@quorum.co.uk

© 2024 Quorum Network Resources Ltd All Rights Reserved. | Environmental Policy | Sitemap | Privacy Policy

CONTACT INFO

Quorum Network Resources Ltd
18 Greenside Lane Edinburgh
UK EH1 3AH
Phone: +44 131 652 3954
Email: marketing@quorum.co.uk

FOLLOW US

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

© 2024 Quorum Network Resources Ltd All Rights Reserved. | Environmental Policy | Sitemap | Privacy Policy
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