Rowanmoor Pensions is the largest independent provider of self-administered schemes in the UK, formed following a management buy-out from the Abbey Group by directors James Hay, Ian Hammond and David Downie. With little time to establish their own IT department, Rowanmoor turned to virtual IT solution specialist Intercept to fully outsource their IT.The ChallengeFollowing an MBO from the parent group, Abbey, Rowanmoor had a window of 6 months to move its data and IT infrastructure from within the Abbey group. Director David Downie had the arduous task of investigating the best possible IT solution to meet his company’s needs. During his research, it became clearly apparent that establishing his own IT department was not only cost prohibitive, it was too time consuming. To purchase, support and maintain the same environment that they had previously at Abbey would have cost over £500,000 per annum, and taken at least 12 months to implement.
The other challenge was that the way the data had been stored on the parent company’s IT infrastructure meant that there were many man hours required to identify and then migrate the data to a new system. Due to stringent FSA regulations, Rowanmoor had to prove that it could migrate and maintain client data in a secure and compliant managed environment.
Time was not a luxury that Mr Downie had, and due to this constraint he decided to look at the possibility of outsourcing his complete IT infrastructure. He had been recommended to Intercept by Delta Financial Systems the SSAS Independent Software Vendor.
Solution
After an initial meeting with Intercept, it was apparent that their OnlineDesktop solution met every need Rowanmoor had, both from a business benefit, user and FSA compliance point of view.
“When looking at IT, our priorities were;
 Security of data Efficient disaster recovery Security of systems from hackers, viruses etc. Up to date platforms on which our systems could run Management of our IT system More efficient remote access and Fewer issues with laptops
We were impressed with Intercept’s systems and we believed that they were a business who we could work with, we approached a number of their clients and were given excellent references,” said Mr David Downie.
The first steps were to pilot a small network to run Rowanmoor’s financial accounting system and this was conducted over a 3G card, with the results delivering exactly what Rowanmoor required. In November 2006 Intercept worked throughout the last weekend to migrate the data from the parent IT infrastructure and consequently by noon on the Monday all staff were accessing their Applications and Data on the new system without problems.
“The service we received from Intercept was second to none. Since going live, the change has been remarkable; the help desk is friendly, fast and efficient; the systems can be accessed when and how you want to and we have virtually stopped using laptops, except for PowerPoint presentations.”
Intercept is provisioning Microsoft Office, Outlook and a number of other line of business applications such as SSAS Pro, for Rowanmoor Pensions.
Business benefits include:
Immediate availability of latest releases of software without the need to upgrade hardware. Per user/per month pricing enables budgetary control. Inherent built in Business Continuity. Free help desk support. In built software asset management (SAM).
Next Steps
Having seen the benefits of hosted data, Rowanmoor will be introducing the new offering from Intercept, OnlineOffice early in Q1 2007. OnlineVoice is the integration of IP telephony and their applications. “From tests already conducted, we expect the rollout to be as uneventful as our IT System,” said Mr David Downie, “Our estimates for the phone system look as if we will save at least 25% on running costs of a conventional system.” |
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