A modern workplace for the Wingate Group with Extech Cloud

“In 2018, Extech Cloud began working with the Wingate Group, which comprises an award-winning firm of Chartered Financial Planners and Wingate Benefit Solutions – an employee benefits consultancy. Initially Extech Cloud was called upon to provide support and advise on how to renew ageing IT systems.

https://extechcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Wingate-Group.jpg

At the time, the Wingate team had tired on-site servers, with an application hosted by a private cloud provider, although the company was already in the process of evaluating a SaaS cloud line of business application. Wingate required the legacy application as a system of record to retain access to client history.

The Wingate Group also had several critical requirements that were essential when it came to moving IT operations to the Cloud. Security, GDPR compliance and meeting industry standards, and what’s required of insurance and financial Institutions, were top of the list.

When Wingate started its journey to the Cloud, the Modern Workplace concept was still relatively new. The team at Extech Cloud developed a Cloud infrastructure for the company, ideal for a professional services firm, and configured management for user accounts, endpoint security and compliance policies, giving Wingate peace of mind.

Emails were then migrated to the Cloud, along with company files and data to SharePoint and OneDrive. The company was also set up with MS Teams for better collaboration.

The team also required occasional access to their legacy application, which was only needed for infrequent query access. They required SQL and application servers which are usually costly to run and require high resource.

Since the legacy application was only needed on an infrequent basis, Extech Cloud created an innovative full hosting environment for the application and configured Azure servers to start up and shut down for 3 hours each day, for 2 days a week. As Azure, a Microsoft hosting platform, is billed purely on usage, the team at Extech Cloud helped to reduce Wingate’s costs from 744 hours each month to only 24 hours each month, achieving significant cost savings.

Operate from anywhere

Where day-to-day business operations at Wingate Benefit Solutions had once revolved entirely around on-premise servers, the team can now operate from anywhere.

In uncertain and challenging times during the COVID-19 lockdown, very little IT support was needed. Thanks to the Cloud, Wingate Group employees could be sent home without any hesitation and were instantly able to pick up their work remotely.

We moved all our staff seamlessly from working in the office to their homes with no management support necessary and Microsoft Teams has become our new best friend! says Paul Weeks, Commercial Director for Wingate.

Ongoing IT support

Today, Extech Cloud provides support for any issues and requests that come from 40 Wingate staff members. The Extech team is on-hand to provide advice on security and compliance standards as and when it’s needed, along with ensuring that processes are documented in line with regulatory body requirements at all times.

Day-to-day tasks include managing endpoint devices, ensuring they are patched, updated, encrypted and in good health, to managing Wingate’s Office 365 tenant and ensuring that any changes to the product set are evaluated and introduced as and when they’re required. Extech Cloud manages the Azure hosting service and ensures that appropriate product versions are used by the team.

READ MORE ABOUT WINGATE’S JOURNEY TO THE MODERN WORKPLACE

Ready to start your journey to the Modern Workplace?

If you’re a professional services organisation, you too could benefit from transforming your approach to IT and migrating your operations to the Cloud.

Extech Cloud has spent years refining the process of cloud transformation for businesses just like yours and our experts can help you start your journey to the Modern Workplace right away. Contact us now and you could be the next customer to save thousands of pounds, improving your overall performance and keep your staff happy while they’re remote working.

Call 01444 443200 or email us at info@extech.co.uk.