Customer Stories: Farrow & Ball

With the help of Littlefish, first time outsourcers Farrow & Ball’s IT goes from ‘good’ to ‘great.

 

Why Littlefish?

Littlefish were amongst a long list of potential IT suppliers ranging from medium-sized, global Managed Service Providers, to smaller, niche support providers. Falling into the latter category Littlefish understood Farrow and Ball’s need, as a first time outsourcer, to be flexible in service design and engaged with the senior Farrow and Ball IT team to tailor a managed IT support offering.

“Littlefish have proved to be a great IT partner. they are responsive, flexible, honest and genuinely focused on improving our IT service. We have also been impressed with their comprehensive, tailored KPI reporting pack.”

Paul Dryden – Farrow & Ball, Head of IT

The Solution

Littlefish designed a support brief for Farrow and Ball that would:

  • Enhance and extend service coverage
  • ‘Own’ all Support Requests as a single-point-of-contact
  • Reduce ongoing Incident volumes through Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis
  • Promote more appropriate IT governance structures
  • Adopt a continual service improvement methodology and mentality

Farrow and Ball internal IT team now squarely focus on improving line-of-business processes and projects, IT strategy, and delivering core business goals, safe in the knowledge that the IT users and underlying infrastructure are taken care of by Littlefish.

Transition

As with all Littlefish transitions the goal is to create an excellent first impression and hit the ground running. This is especially important for a first time outsourcer like Farrow and Ball. Through a blend of on-site knowledge gathering and remote service configuration the transition was successful and Littlefish were able to attain and exceed SLAs from month one.

Professional Services

The Littlefish IT strategy workshops provide Farrow and Ball with valuable input into their overarching IT strategy. These quarterly sessions provide a key insight into product developments and other topics pertinent to their road map. Thanks to the positive working relationship developed with Farrow and Ball, Littlefish have been well placed to support Farrow and Ball with the delivery of some key projects including:

  • Worldwide Thin Client Replacement Project
  • vSphere Server Hardware Refresh
  • Citrix XenApp 8.5 Upgrade
  • PCI/DSS QSA Recommendation Remediation

Customer Service Improvement & Satisfaction

Despite over-performing against SLAin the first contract year, Littlefish has not rested on its laurels. In the two key areas of Telephone Call Answering and First Call Resolution (FCR)Littlefish has further raised the bar in year two, improving Telephone Call Answering by 5% and FCR by 15% in comparison with year one.

Through the various customer feedback mechanisms Littlefish have been able to demonstrate that whilst the service meets and exceeds the usual KPI objectives it has also delivered very strongly on customer satisfaction.

Farrow and Ball staff have rated 91% of their remote support experiences as Good or Excellent. In addition to this Farrow and Ball staff have also indicated through independent customer satisfaction surveys that on average they are very satisfied with the Littlefish service.

Client Outcomes

Farrow and Ball’s IT Managed Service Agreement has delivered the following improvements and enhancements to its IT function:

  • Improved service levels for end-user support
  • 24/7 Service Desk (critical for the Farrow and Ball worldwide showrooms)
  • Enhanced infrastructure monitoring capabilities
  • A trusted IT partner

If you’re thinking about becoming a first-time outsourcer or want a more tailored approach to your IT services partnership contact us to discuss your current challenges.

Get In Touch