Offloading IT services management to Netsurit drives Volvo Group to new efficiencies

Volvo Group sidesteps the high cost of investing in ICT infrastructure by choosing managed IT services, allowing it to focus on its core business.

Johannesburg, 04 Mar 2020

Information technology (IT) enables business, and business drives IT. Successful organisations are those that create one unified team from these seemingly disparate silos. When business and IT work together, knowledge, skills and resources can be aligned, enabling people to work smarter, not harder.

That’s what drove Prashika Ramnath, General Manager of IT at Volvo Group Southern Africa, to turn to Netsurit when she joined Volvo in early 2019.

Fact sheet
Solution: Ad hoc projects
Industry: Motor
Provider: Netsurit
User: Volvo Group Southern Africa

The problem

In her previous role at another company, Ramnath had come to know how dependable Netsurit’s services offering was. Faced with a lack of support for infrastructure requirements, non-competitive pricing from a number of other vendors, lack of IT resources to perform consulting duties, and poor customer service for business users because of a lack of resources, she introduced Netsurit to Volvo, one of the world’s best known and respected brands in the automotive and retail sector.

“IT leaders need to have confidence that every cent of their IT budget is pulling its weight, which means understanding both the true cost of IT and the value that it provides to the business,” says Ramnath. 

“My objectives were to improve on Volvo IT’s service delivery to Volvo Business and to assist with optimising IT spend. Specifically, this involved market-related pricing for infrastructure, driving down of costs, quick turnaround times and, importantly, improved customer satisfaction.”

The solution

Based on her prior experience of working with the Netsurit team, Ramnath was convinced that they would have the skills and ability to deliver the calibre of service that her department was looking for.

Thus far, Netsurit has provided consulting resources, swift quoting and rapid delivery of requirements. The team have also delivered priority assistance for ad hoc requests, which are common in any workplace, and generally have tighter time frames too.

Ad hoc projects tend to rely more on specialised talent and resources, and often address a specific function rather than a broad initiative.

The benefits

Among the many benefits of managed IT services are reduced total cost of ownership, minimised technology investment, access to skilled resources without having to spend on continuously hiring and training IT staff, access to state-of-the-art infrastructure, and fast upgrades to existing infrastructure without having to worry about buying, deploying and maintaining. Moreover, there is 24/7 service desk access and guaranteed SLAs.

From network and data centre management services to disaster recovery, storage and backup, server management, security and IT support, it is possible to offload the day-to-day provisioning of significant chunks of the IT function. This liberates financial and human resources staff to focus on productivity and efficiency.

Ramnath says that since contracting with Netsurit, the burden of managing burning IT issues has been eased. “We can delegate a range of services to Netsurit, knowing with full confidence that they will be managed in the way we expect. With smooth integration into Volvo IT and quick slotting-in of skilled resources, Netsurit has taken away the hassles of having to interview and screen candidates externally. The result is improved customer service, efficiency and reliability. Our users have renewed confidence in our IT department.”

The future

Faced with mounting costs and an increasingly complex IT environment to manage, organisations are now, more than ever, looking at managed IT services as an alternative to in-house IT infrastructure management. Looking ahead, Volvo IT will continue to seek value-added service offerings from Netsurit that help to drive down costs.

“We are committed to travelling the technology journey with Volvo IT,” says Heelesh Heera, Account Executive at Netsurit. “Increased reliability leads to greater staff confidence in IT which, in turn, improves morale and leads to efficiency gains across the business.”

Ramnath adds that there are always pros and cons to working with any company, but what matters most is that the pros outweigh the cons. “Where there are problems, these must be dealt with and resolved quickly, and lessons must be learned from those mistakes, so they do not recur. My experience with Netsurit has been great thus far and, as senior management commented, if they don’t hear from me, that’s a good thing.”

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