Extraordinary IT support for the curators of extraordinary travel

cazenove+loyd

For more than 25 years, London-based SMB cazenove+loyd has been designing extraordinary tailor-made holidays, small group trips and celebrations for its customers. It specialises in jealousy-inducing, highly exclusive ‘holidays of a lifetime’ to fascinating destinations across Africa, the Indian Ocean, Central and South America, Asia, the Middle East, Australasia, and the Polar Regions.

Two things are central to cazenove+loyd’s business:

1) Reliable high-performing IT infrastructure

2) Unparalleled, personal attention and service from real experts with first-hand knowledge.

As Carl Hobson, cazenove+loyd’s managing director explains: “We’re a very IT-dependent business but we’re also small, so the idea of having a dedicated in-house IT person on the payroll isn’t viable. Therefore, we rely on IT managed service providers (MSPs) to fundamentally look after our IT infrastructure and navigate us through the day-to-day challenges — such as making sure hardware and software is set up and working properly, that it’s well protected and accessible to everyone, and that we avoid slow-running networks, unplanned downtime and outages. Ultimately, we can’t afford for IT to impair our business processes or become a barrier to transacting.”

Breaking the cycle of disappointment

Techsolve is the third MSP Carl has hired in recent years: “I’ve always hated IT procurement because it’s such a frustrating experience and a bit of a lottery. With our previous suppliers everything always starts out full of promise but then, after the honeymoon period, it quickly fades. The drop in service is particularly noticeable if they grow and take on more customers. We’ve found ourselves not getting our issues resolved quickly enough to the point where we felt like a bit of number rather than a client. We’ve been working with Techsolve for over two years now and everything is still great. The team today is as professional, focused and diligent as they’ve ever been.”

Personal service with a capital ‘P’

Techsolve’s mentality and ability to reciprocate the personalised service that’s so central to cazenove+loyd’s own customer relationships is really powerful. Carl explains: “Austin and Augi are all about forging personal relationships. They understand the detractors of other MSPs and don’t leave anything to chance. They’re always checking in, adding value, taking an interest in what’s going on and making sure we’re still getting the right service. That’s really important to me.”

Forward thinking

Used to reactive service delivery Techsolve’s proactive approach is refreshing, as Carl explains: “With the exception of Techsolve, none of our previous MSPs have ever thought about the future, like what our IT needs are going to be based on headcount growth, office relocations, business plans, etc. The service is always reactive and there’s no forward thinking. I really love Techsolve’s quarterly business reviews. They are fastidious about making sure reviews happen and keep a really tight control on what we’ve previously been taking about, our priorities, risk factors, capex sensitivities, and more. They proactively think ahead, offering us solutions and options.

“A good example is our recent office move. As soon as we had found a property, Techsolve was on it in terms of integrating the IT service within the building’s existing infrastructure and thinking about voice, data, reconfiguring servers, and so on. We were also able to move to a rental agreement for IT hardware to save money. Techsolve really embraced the project rather than waiting to be directed.”