Outsourcing tech support key to progression of EIS Group’s business
EIS was established in 1991 to provide a range of industrial and environmental services to businesses including construction, cleaning and maintenance. The company specialises in contract services for the rail industry, with frontline staff working on project across the South of England.
“Technology has become one of the most important tools for managing and running our business” EIS General Manager, Richard Light shared. “From recording and sending payroll details to finding suppliers for our frontline staff in remote areas of the South West and South East regions of the country. The use of technology, including video calls; has improved our productivity and our ability to overcome issues on site, where before a visit to site would have been made by managerial staff to offer advice or structure changes to working methodology.”
Richard’s past frustrations with technology is an experience shared with others we’ve spoken to who are responsible for this vital component of running a business.
“It used to have a huge impact on my time. Being reasonably tech savvy, I was the go-to person whenever our technology failed, needed replacing or new solutions were being rolled out. So instead of using my time to improve working practices, business growth and compliance with ever-changing legislation, I found myself spending a lot of time on technological issues.”
Since Spring 2020, most businesses have been faced with adopting some level of remote working arrangements. For EIS it was an opportunity to review their infrastructure and make better use of new technologies available.
“Enforcing remote home working for office staff brought huge challenges in communication, working practices and keeping documents up to date” Richard revealed. “Our business works in the utilities and rail sector and the requirement for audits on the business were still a necessity throughout the lockdown. During times where the office was unmanned, there was a good possibility of missing an important telephone call on the business landline and whist we use company mobiles, our clients feel more comfortable having one number to call to report urgent jobs or to find out the status of current jobs.”
A year later it’s a very different story for EIS. Implementing cloud-based solutions and outsourcing technical support has allowed Richard to focus on day-to-day business operations.
“The company now has a robust business continuity plan, (tried and tested between April 2020 and now), which utilises the use of Microsoft SharePoint for company documentation, a cloud hosted phone system with remote desktop access, Microsoft Teams meetings and messaging which allows better communication and the purchase of new computer hardware, which allows quicker data processing in the office and home working environments. The technical support received from Grapevine frees up more of my time to concentrate on the business rather than technological matters and their support staff are able to deal with our issues quickly and more effectively than we could in-house.”
EIS’ tech journey doesn’t end here, Richard shares his aspirations for continuing to move forward.
“The business would like to go paperless over the coming years and be able to issue jobs to our staff in digital format, with those staff completing digital documents to enable real time project management and the ability to invoice quickly, efficiently and make the processes involved less time consuming.”
To learn more about EIS please visit dwdeisltd.co.uk
