case study: sereia
Could Assembly deliver a scalable, future-proof infrastructure for a rapidly-expanding recruitment consultancy?
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The Challenge: Having established itself in an ultra-competitive global recruitment market, Sereia had grown rapidly and had plans for further international expansion. In two years the company had doubled in size to 16 consultants, largely due to a growing reputation for delivering high quality candidates combined with a consultative approach to client relationships. Sereia’s management team knew that in the recruitment & professional services space, success had to be leveraged in order to remain competitive and a strategic plan to double the size of the company again within 18 months was agreed. The one challenge with this plan was the lack of a central IT function, as support services were ad-hoc and from several different suppliers, none of whom seemed capable of enabling Sereia to take full advantage of technology in driving the business forward. Their consultants in Cape Town, Brisbane & New York had all been allowed to source their own IT services and support, resulting in the company struggling to manage any sort of overall uniformity of service. Lack of accountability was a major issue, with countless valuable management hours being wasted liaising with disinterested helpdesks. There was a loss of faith in these providers to even resolve routine issues, let alone roll-out the new services that Sereia knew they needed. Sereia were keen to have a light-touch, flexible solution that would allow consultants to switch between laptops and mobile devices seamlessly. The nature of their business, and the global sand CRM integration to be hosted and centrally managed in the UK. |
The Process: The management team wanted to avoid the endless, inefficient paperwork it had endured with previous suppliers, so Assembly designed a standardised model for future offices to minimise administration and unify contracts and billing. This incorporated set-specification mobile devices, laptops and connectivity solutions alongside easily-scalable CRM and other software licensing. The global spread of their team meant that a cloud-based Unified Communications platform was the obvious choice. The Assembly solutions consultants began scoping and designing this, with email and CRM integration to be hosted and centrally managed in the UK. Ad-hoc support services were replaced by a centralised support function via Assembly’s 24/7/365 service desk, with established local partners providing on-site support in each territory. Once this was in place, the Unified Communications solution was deployed in Assembly’s UK data centre and training for Sereia’s staff was carried out in London with web-based training for Brisbane, New York & Capetown. At the same time, our connectivity team carried out a review of all Sereia’s third party services. This included the technical & commercial negotiation of improved and unified connectivity solutions, SIP and voice/video services to ensure high availability of Sereia’s new UC platform. Finally, the new CRM was deployed on Assembly’s cloud platform and integrated into the overall solution. |
The Results: Sereia now has a stable, scalable IT infrastructure network which is light-touch and requires minimal management. The upgraded connectivity at all sites, combined with the alignment of staff devices with the new Unified Communications platform means that Sereia’s consultants have all the tools they need to succeed. The company has a unified support & services function for the first time, cutting administration time and costs. Faith in IT as a business enabler has been restored across the company. Placing the core infrastructure in Assembly’s data centre has kept hardware and maintenance costs low and the overall solution enables Sereia to be extremely agile and responsive. The standardised model for new office roll-outs gives the management team the ability to plan and budget for future growth with confidence. "Assembly delivered everything they said they would, and more besides. We have a great relationship with them and they are an integral part of our business." Vic de la Flor
Managing Director, Sereia |
