Client Profile
Founded by former CP+B veterans, the client is a marketing agency based in South Florida that prides itself with bringing “big agency strategic thinking and creative talent” to brands of all sizes. The founding partners have a combined 50 years of experience in “bringing brands to life,” across a myriad of industries from automotive to aviation to packaged goods.
Business Challenge
Not long after the company was launched, our client won a sizable account with a globally renowned brand in the automotive industry. Their task? To handle all of their marketing for Latin America and the Caribbean. One of the required criteria in order to move forward though, was that they had to be compliant with Verband der Automobilindustrie IT policies. Verband der Automobilindustrie or the VDA, is the German Association of the Automotive Industry that sets the standards for the automotive industry.
Because of Auxis’ 22 years of IT expertise, the client approached Auxis to perform a rapid IT assessment of their infrastructure and take actions required to get them compliant with the IT policies set forth by VDA.
At the time that Auxis was approached, the client did not have a functional IT department. Their IT footprint at best, was very small due to the relative size of the organization. Some of the gaps and challenges they were facing were significant. In short order:
- There was no infrastructure in place
- There were few if any, documented policies, procedures or controls
- There was no service desk support for the business users or the company
- There was no established IT department to provide support to the business or data
After the assessment was completed, the client quickly realized that their IT environment and support model needed a major upgrade. With this knowledge in hand, they turned to Auxis to become their IT Managed Services Provider.
Solution & Approach
In order to help bring the company up to the required standards of VDA, and set the stage for stable IT operations going forward, Auxis’ engagement started by leading the following key initiatives:
- Developing policies and procedures and implementing proper IT Governance and Operational best practices processes to support the organization
- Implementing additional technology to support the business, including:
- Strengthening the infrastructure tools
- Buying additional equipment that was sorely needed
- Adding additional servers
- Establishing the monitoring of alerts, scheduling & running regular back-ups, creating patches and updating antivirus definitions
- Migrating to the cloud (AWS)
In addition, the client outsourced their day-to-day IT Operations with Auxis:
- Implemented a remote 24×7 Service Desk with support from the Auxis Nearshore Center in Costa Rica effectively handling requests and coordinating issue escalations when needed
- Onsite Desktop Support for the South Florida Office at a fraction of the cost of having a full-time dedicated technician
- Designing and establishing a business continuity program with off-line backups and file server sync to ensure stability of the business given any type of situation or emergency
The implementation of these initiatives and the subsequent transition to a fully functional IT department lasted 3 months and after only 6 months of the transition, the environment was completely stable.
Whitepaper/Guides
U.S. Labor Savings Report for IT: Creating Value with Nearshore Outsourcing from Costa Rica
Results
By working with Auxis, the client was able to quickly benefit from best-in-class talent and tools like any other larger organization.
Key results included:
- Obtained all approvals from VDA to finalize the multi-year contract with the recently won account, resulting in annual revenues of several million USD.