Samsic UK

Global leaders in facilities management

Samsic are a global provider of facilities management. Although headquartered in France, Samsic operates in 27 countries, including the United Kingdom. The Samsic Group boasts annual revenue of €3.2 Billion.

Samsic provide a range of services including contract cleaning, security, waste management, and technical maintenance. Employing nearly 4,000 people in the UK alone, Samsic is a juggernaut in its field.

Samsic UK have been clients of the entrust IT Group for over a decade, and in that time we have worked closely with their team to deliver exceptional value and support the business.

The Challenge

Prior to partnering with entrust IT Group, Samsic UK had a long-term outsourced IT relationship with another Managed Service Provider. However, when the company embarked on a new growth journey with an acquisition, they began to lose confidence in that provider to deliver their needs effectively.

“As we began to grow rapidly in the UK the incumbent provider, who had served us well until that point, started to fall short.” comments Andrew Bryan, IT & SHEQ at Samsic UK. “We really felt as though we were lacking a proactive service. Instead, the provider was simply reacting to problems as they arose, as they lacked the resource to be able to think ahead.”

The challenge of integrating a smaller but well-established company into their group meant Samsic required a new partner who could take a long-term approach.

“We had a big task to integrate our newly acquired company into the group structure. To work efficiently meant having all companies on the same platforms, sharing data and collaborating effectively. We needed a partner with experience here, steering us in the right direction.”

As a company that works around the clock, with sites and services operating across the country, having a support service that could meet complex requirements was essential. Samsic certainly could not work with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ support package. Seeking more, the team went to market and after a detailed procurement process, chose the entrust IT Group as their new partner.

The Solution

The team at entrust IT Group worked to integrate the latest acquisition into the main structure of Samsic UK’s IT infrastructure. Both companies were now working on the same platforms, allowing them to pool resources, unlocking new efficiencies.

Once onboarded, entrust IT Group supported Samsic with a UK-based helpdesk, as well as proactive site visits from friendly, qualified engineers who embedded themselves in the company.

“I was particularly impressed with how entrust IT Group catered to our specific needs. They offered us out-of-hours support, on-site and remote support, and their expert consultancy helped us to make sensible choices about our IT.” continues Bryan. “Importantly, we finally had a proactive support service – something we really needed.”

As part of the service, entrust IT Group provide Samsic with two account managers. One to assist with strategy, and as a liaison between the two companies, and one with a specific technical focus, who gets to know the company’s infrastructure intimately. This provides two major benefits. Firstly, Samsic management can always get through to somebody who knows them, and it also assists in stable long-term planning.

“The handover process from our existing IT partner to the entrust IT Group was smooth and surprisingly easy. The team outlined in great detail what would happen, and when, and what was needed from us to get there. They provided us with a project plan for some of our critical projects, and this made budgeting and resource planning a simple process. The onboarding set the tone for the next decade of our relationship.”

The Benefits

To meet their growth targets, Samsic identified two issues that needed to be addressed. Firstly, they needed to take a long-term view of their infrastructure, making upgrades and improvements and integrating these into their network of companies. They also needed a proactive support service which would ease the burden on their internal IT team.

The entrust IT Group, with a wealth of experience in growing multi-site businesses, and their UK-based support service, had exactly what Samsic needed. All day-to-day service issues are sent to entrust IT Group’s ITIL helpdesk, with extended availability hours specifically for Samsic.

The entrust IT Group team identified a handful of technology bottlenecks that were reducing productivity, and worked methodically to upgrade these and eradicate problems.

Furthermore, the team at Samsic are provided with vast amounts of information on service performance to ensure that they are always up-to-date. Dashboards provide information on performance against SLAs, average ticket numbers and how quickly they are closed, as well as what aspects of their infrastructure are generating the most support issues.

This information is used to set the tone of quarterly strategy meetings, where priorities are set for the subsequent quarters.

“We really appreciate the quarterly strategy meetings between our management team and our account managers at entrust IT Group. These are a valuable tool for guiding us with the best technology and strategies to meet our needs as a growing business.”

Over the decade of partnership between Samsic and entrust IT Group, the benefits have been clear to see.

“The assistance of entrust IT Group in migrating us to better technology platforms, as well as the fantastic support of the service team, mean that today we are measuring a 500% increase in resource efficiency compared to the period leading up to our partnership. Our IT team are grateful to be freed up to focus more on the projects that will drive us forward as a business, now we are confident that our daily service issues are managed by a team of engineers we trust.” remarks Andrew Bryan.

Natalie Fairweather, Samsic’s Account Manager at the entrust IT Group, says in relation to the partnership: “I have been Samsic’s Account Manager throughout our entire relationship – over 10 years. That stability and continuity has really contributed to the success of our partnership. We’ve got a great relationship.”

The Future

Despite such a long partnership, the hunger for future improvements and efficiencies has not been lost. Now that Samsic have a stable platform that is delivering them the growth they require, the next focus is on Cyber Security.

“The cyber threat landscape is constantly shifting and a large company like ours is always a target.” continues Andrew Bryan, “looking into the future, our focus will be on bolstering our defences. A key target for the business is a Cyber Essentials Plus certification, and that will mean making some improvements to our cyber resilience.”

As an ISO27001 certified company and effective cyber security consultant, the entrust IT Group will continue to be a key ally for Samsic, assisting in the process of Cyber Essentials Plus certification.

With such ambitious plans for growth at this innovative business, the entrust IT Group continues to be a trusted partner for Samsic long into the future.