Partnership Demonstrates IT's Strategic Role In A Growing UK Business
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – 22 JULY 2010 – Star, a provider of on-demand computing and communication services for UK businesses, today announced that UK Wealth Management ("UKWM"), one of the country's leading wealth management services organisations, has selected Star to manage their computing and communications infrastructure as service that allows all branch offices to have access to centralised applications and tools. Star also provides round the clock management of the network, customer support and project manages the connectivity for all new offices. This means that UKWM has been able to add new branches and increase turnover by a quarter, without recruiting additional members to its IT team.
Star's partnership with UKWM demonstrates the strategic role IT can play in a growing UK business. UKWM has been able to execute its business growth strategy thanks to solutions which have given them the platform for quick and cost-effective expansion. The speed of integrating new offices within the corporate network was another key factor in UKWM's ongoing partnership with Star. When a new local office is opened, they have to ensure that staff can be up and running as quickly as possible to guarantee a smooth transition for their clients.
Gordon Flower, Finance Director at UKWM, who also has overall responsibility for the IT function, commented, "We have strong ambitions for organic growth through compelling propositions and expansion via acquisition. This represents a strong vision for our company and it has been critical for us to have the right building blocks in place to help us meet our objectives. Whenever we consider potential partners, suppliers or acquisition targets the first thing we do is to look for synergies with organisations which share our vision and values. Growing through acquisition presents its own challenges and as such we are committed to using managed IT and communication services. This helps us to centralise the management of all systems and roll out services to support our branches as and when needed, but without large capital investment. This approach means we don't have to increase costs proportionately with the expansion of the business. We can avoid the need to continually recruit more IT staff as we acquire additional and geographically dispersed offices. In fact, we operate with a very small in-house team of two IT professionals and still have spare capacity to open more branches before we need to consider hiring more people."
Martino Corbelli, Marketing Director at Star, commented, "UKWM has been able to execute on their business strategy thanks to solutions which give them the flexibility and agility they need to make decisions quickly and control their costs. This is a perfect example how a medium sized UK business is making more strategic use of business technology in these challenging times. In doing so, Gordon is able to add value to the business and prepare for future growth. It's clear that the net result of not investing vast sums of money to own all the technology to make their operation effective, releases resources for more important activities. Instead, Gordon's team can simply manage a relationship with a service provider and re-focus their attention and resources on what will make them even more successful."
In addition to managing the network Star also provides a managed firewall, content filtering for web and email to keep systems and users as secure as possible, as well as services for replicating data to support the organisation's disaster recovery plans.
About UK Wealth Management
UK Wealth Management (UKWM) is one of the country's leading wealth management services organisations. Head quartered in Leeds, UKWM was established in 2008 when it became the holding company for several independent advisory firms, including Yorkshire Investment Group. The Group employs over 120 people with branches across the Midlands and North of England, including Rugby, Macclesfield, York and Pontefract.
These advisory firms provide a range of financial services for high net worth clients and UKWM provides centralised services to each of its seven trading companies.