Idea 11's next-gen TechOps Managed Services enables Wilsons to drive business innovation
About Wilsons Advisory:
Wilsons Advisory is a leading financial services company with a distinguished 125-year history in Australia. Wilsons client-first approach allows it to partner with clients for the long-term and provide a wide array of financial and advisory services that range from private wealth management, corporate finance and research, through to investment strategy and institutional sales.
Overview
Wilsons Advisory is a leading financial services company with a distinguished 125-year history in Australia. Wilsons client-first approach allows it to partner with clients for the long-term and provide a wide array of financial and advisory services that range from private wealth management, corporate finance and research, through to investment strategy and institutional sales. “We are a focused organisation that delivers valuable outcomes for our clients across all these areas” says Mark Beverley, Head of IT for Wilsons Advisory.
Wilsons had already moved their IT workloads to AWS, however, on evaluation of their IT needs, Wilsons realised that their legacy Managed Services Provider was not equipped to support us in delivering these outcomes for our clients. “We needed a partner that would service our business needs and help us drive positive business outcomes,” says Beverley.
Wilsons needed a next-gen AWS Managed Services Provider that was highly innovative and skilled at providing a full lifecycle of services and that would provide the ultimate return on their IT investment. “We realised that although we were on AWS, we were not utilising the full benefits and functionality of AWS. We needed a strategic IT partner that could help us leverage our AWS environment to its fullest potential,” says Beverley.
Not only tasked with managing Wilsons’ AWS environment, the provider would take end-to-end ownership of Wilsons IT environment, spanning from user support through to networking, security and server infrastructure – enabling Wilsons to focus on delivering business value.
Challenges
Opportunity to find a better value option
Wilsons saw an opportunity to find a service provider that could deliver a more appropriate managed service at better value.
User experience
There was a misalignment with employee IT support needs and the level of service that was provided. A clear requirement for the IT service was timeliness and responsiveness to ensure that employees had confidence in the process, and the level of support available to them to ensure they could maintain productivity and client service.
Ensuring the solution was appropriate
With Wilsons’ evolving, growth-oriented business strategy, the IT capability needed to evolve and adapt to provide not just day to day support, but also the agility to expand its operations.
Innovating to create efficiency
With a rapidly growing business, there was a need for creative and innovative thinking to help performance and reduce IT complexity. Wilsons needed an innovative AWS focused Managed Services Provider who would help them identify legacy IT and provide guidance to optimise performance.
"Idea 11 is a team full of AWS experts who mean business. I have been putting my trust on their expertise every single day and they have been consistently exceeding my expectations. They are great at teamwork and collaborate with my team on a day to day basis. They are truly an extension of my IT team."
- Mark Beverley, Head of IT, Wilsons Advisory
The Solution
Wilsons Advisory was already outpacing its competitors in the adoption of cloud services, having previously migrated to AWS as a strategic technology solution. While the migration itself had been a success, Wilsons was seeking to differentiate its services and use of technology through the cloud, and needed a service model that would reflect its cloud strategy.
When Wilsons began to explore moving to a new, innovative, AWS capable managed service provider, AWS strongly recommended Idea 11. Idea 11 would be able to offer a full-stack service to Wilsons, not only managing Wilsons’ AWS environment, but extending support right through the environment, from networking, Citrix and server infrastructure, right through to end user support.
To kick-start the partnership, Idea 11 carried out an initial environment assessment of Wilsons’ existing technology environment. This enabled both Wilsons and Idea 11 to capture a better understanding of their IT environment, the different technologies in use, their impact on the business, and also exposed the risks and vulnerabilities that existed in the IT environment.
Once Wilsons was transitioned over to Idea 11’s TechOps Managed Services, a range of initiatives were kicked off to improve capability and security, to reduce costs, and to enable innovation within the business. Idea 11 worked with Wilsons to cost-optimise their AWS environment, address key risks, and uplift aspects such as security and Citrix end-user-computing infrastructure.
“I was particularly impressed with Idea 11’s proactiveness during the earlier engagements. They’d follow-up on every action item and drive the business as their own,” says Beverley.
Idea 11’s TechOps Managed Services team continues to work closely with Wilsons day-in and day-out – ensuring that Wilsons are enabled to focus on mission-critical and revenue-generating projects – while Idea 11 proactively manages the technology environment and works to ensure they get the best out of technology, every day.
Outcomes and benefits
AWS costs were reduced: Idea 11 effectively managed and monitored Wilsons’ AWS costs, while keeping performance and capacity balanced as per Wilsons’ requirements. “We now had the ability to respond to changing business needs without increasing costs,” adds Beverley.
Enhanced security: Being in a highly regulated industry, Wilsons are exposed to an ever-evolving security landscape. Idea 11 helped uplift Wilsons’ security to meet stringent requirements specific to their industry.
A stable, high-performing technology environment: Wilsons were finally empowered to focus on their business without having to worry about IT issues. “We were finally in a position where we could drive critical business projects without having to worry about our IT infrastructure. We were rest assured that it was in safe hands,” adds Beverley.
Improved end-user engagement and support, with staff now finding their support issues being resolved in a timely and professional manner.
Transition from legacy services like SCCM to AWS native systems management, resulting in a simplified and cost-optimised environment that uses next-gen technology.
About Idea 11:
Our next-gen TechOps Managed Services is driven by our customer-obsessed philosophy, with the goal of enabling customers to focus on their own business while we use our expertise to manage and maintain their IT environment.
Recommended by AWS for our unparalleled, full-stack managed services capabilities and diverse technical expertise, Wilsons Advisory engaged Idea 11 as their Managed Services Provider to cover everything from AWS to the end-user.
Beverley adds, “One thing that I was particularly impressed with was how knowledgeable and skillful the entire team of Idea 11 was. They came across as a group of experts that we could rely on. Idea 11 was a great fit for us.”
