ANS Group specialises in providing managed compute, storage and network infrastructures, built on-premise or provided as a cloud based solution in its data centres. ANS has over 600 customers spread across the public and private sectors, including Salisbury NHS, North Staffordshire NHS, The London Borough of Tower Hamlets, DeVere Group, Media City and Big Lotto.

As a company, ANS prides itself on quality and security policies (certified to ISO 9001 Quality Management System and ISO 27001 Information Security Management System standards).

It has recently invested in Sunrise’s ITSM Service Management   solution to help it continue to deliver consistent high levels of customer service during a period of rapid growth. Success in the past two years has seen turnover grow from £12m to in excess of £50m.

ANS Group uses Sunrise’s software across its business, managing not just IT Incident Management and Change Management for customers, but also supporting its critical business processes. From tracking and capturing sales leads through to managing customer contracts, order processing and scheduling consultants’ time, Sunrise ITSM is used throughout the organisation.

A single view of the customer

ANS Group initially selected Sunrise to replace its legacy IT systems which had been used for over ten years. Different systems were utilised for customer relationship management, call logging, billing and contracts data, with no single view of the customer.

Scott Fletcher, Chairman and Founder of ANS Group explained; “We chose Sunrise because we liked the flexibility of the solution, based on the ITIL 3 framework. The account team at Sunrise really understood what we wanted to achieve to support our business processes.

“We looked at a lot of different solutions and liked the fact that Sunrise is a UK company with an established business and their flexible approach meant that we can work with them as partners.”

“We are managing all aspects of our customer records with Sunrise, including 1,000 contracts and over 25,000 customer assets – in our database. As well as managing our IT services to customers Sunrise encompasses the whole of our customer relationship, from initial sales through to contract management, order processing, tracking consultancy hours and invoicing,” explained Fletcher.

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Read the MSP case study below:

ANS Group was founded in 1996 and has grown to become an award-winning cloud expert with offices in Manchester and London. The company has experienced 80% year on year growth since 2009. Instrumental in this growth has been the organisation’s investment in company-wide fully integrated Service Management systems from Sunrise Software. ANS Group specialises in providing managed compute, storage and network infrastructures, built on-premise or provided as a cloud based solution in its data centres. As a company, ANS prides itself on quality and security policies (certified to ISO 9001 Quality Management System and ISO 27001 Information Security Management System standards). It has recently invested in Sunrise’s Sostenuto ITSM Service Management solution to help  it continue to deliver consistent high levels of customer service during a period of rapid growth. Success in the past two years has seen turnover grow from £12m to in excess of £50m. ANS Group uses Sunrise’s software across its business, managing not just IT Incident management and Change Management for customers, but also supporting its critical business processes. From tracking and capturing sales leads through to managing customer contracts, order processing and scheduling consultants’ time, Sostenuto ITSM is used throughout the organisation.

A single view of the customer 

ANS Group initially selected Sostenuto to replace its legacy IT systems which had been used for over ten years. Different systems were utilised for customer relationship management, call logging, billing and contracts data, with no single view of the customer. Scott Fletcher, Chairman and Founder of ANS Group explained; “We chose Sostenuto because we liked the flexibility of the solution, based on the ITIL 3 framework. The account team at Sunrise really understood what we wanted to achieve to support our business processes. “We looked at a lot of different solutions and liked the fact that Sunrise is a UK company with an established business and their flexible approach meant that we can work with them as partners.” ANS initially used the Sostenuto ITIL version for  Incident Management for customer support and is currently implementing Change Management. Following this success, the company is now using the system to manage contract and sales order processing information for all of its customers.

“We are managing all aspects of our customer records with Sostenuto, including 1,000 contracts and over 25,000 customer assets – in our database. As well as managing our IT services to customers Sostenuto encompasses the whole of our customer relationship, from initial sales through to contract management, order processing, tracking consultancy hours and invoicing,” explained Fletcher. 

Efficiency gains

Following development work carried out in partnership with the Sunrise team, a new online function enables sales commissions to be calculated in real time, rather than waiting for the finance team to produce reports at the end of the month. This has significantly reduced the time spent previously by the finance team – up to three days per month – in reconciling errors.

ANS has benefitted from significant efficiency gains by linking Sostenuto to its Sage accounting system. A purchase order can be created by clicking on a button in Sostenuto that automatically saves data in the order processing, accounts and contracts records, removing the need to re-key data into different systems, reducing errors. “Having one system to manage our processes has paid dividends in many ways. Automating processes has meant great improvements in our data integrity and quality. Our documents are produced in a structured format, with no mistakes and we are assured that approval processes are followed.
"We have easily seen a Return on Investment from Sostenuto within twelve months. Last year we doubled in size and now employ over 150 people. The efficiency gains that we have made by automating processes using Sunrise’s system have saved us the equivalent of recruiting an additional five people,” said Fletcher.

Improved customer service

In addition to the improved workflows and efficient processes, Fletcher believes an important benefit that Sunrise’s system has brought is a complete and up to date view of their customers. All associated orders, contracts details, invoicing history, asset and incident records are stored in one central place, easily accessed by staff for daily tasks and reporting. “Even with our tremendous growth this last year we have managed to maintain or enhance our customer service levels,” said Fletcher. “I don’t believe many companies could claim to have achieved a similar record.”

Future plans 

With most staff members using Sostenuto in their daily work, ANS is now rolling out to the representatives in the field. ANS consultants will use the system to write end of day reports, record expenses and manage holiday requests. The team at ANS is working with Sunrise to develop a mobile application on the iPad that will enable customer signatures to be captured electronically. “Sunrise’s solution has enabled us to meet our business goals to date. We have ambitious plans to reach £100m turnover by 2014 and there is no doubt that our investment in Sostenuto will help us to achieve this.” said Fletcher.