Financial planning and tax services company Paradigm Norton has retained Wiltshire IT services and solutions expert Mintivo to lead its infrastructure and data security management and digital strategy for a further three years.
The new contract follows a successful three year partnership, which Paradigm Norton says has been a key factor in its growth. The company has 90 staff at its offices in Bristol, London, Exeter and Torquay.
IT Operations Manager Charlotte Hughes said Mintivo’s support is a benefit to the business. “They have high calibre engineers on their service desk, which enables us to trust them to manage that service efficiently and effectively and allows us to focus on more in-depth projects such as IT and security strategy,” she said.
“They have also been key in implementing a number of the security controls within the business, recommending certain avenues to look down and presenting to the executive management team on an annual basis with various IT and security recommendations.”
Under Mintivo’s guidance Paradigm Norton has switched to a cloud-based operation, meaning employees, known as partners, can work anywhere. “They make a real effort to understand our needs from a business point of view and how we best want to serve our clients,” said Mrs Hughes.
“We are very happy with the service because they are hitting the mark with what we wanted to achieve and given with what we’ve put in from our side, we feel there is lots more to come from the relationship.”
Mintivo, which offers managed IT support, consultancy, cyber security and business intelligence, is based on the edge of the National Trust village of Lacock and saw its staffing rise from 15 to 29 as turnover grew by 50 per cent last year.
Mintivo Commercial Director Alex Jukes said his company’s personal approach and attention to detail means it is almost seen as ‘in house’ by its client. “They see us as an extension of the company and the fact they include us in their monthly staff update, where we can present on what we have been working on in the background, shows that.
“Right at the start they had a lot they wanted to achieve in terms of IT transformation so we put a three year strategic roadmap in front of them, which we reviewed yearly to ensure it aligned to their business strategy.”
Mintivo Managing Director Chris Gough added: “They are a really good company to work with because they see the value of IT in enabling their business.
“The benefit of working with us is that instead of employing one or two people directly they get access to any one of 29 people – our infrastructure team is looking after their servers, there are 15 people on the helpdesk and our service delivery manager is constantly reviewing its processes. It’s the quality and set-up you’d see in a much larger organisation.”
Mrs Hughes confirmed that Mintivo’s staff are seen as part of the Paradigm Norton team. “They do frequent floor walks at all of our offices, they will come on to training webinars and provide IT trends. We actively encourage them to be part of the team and it wasn’t really a question that we weren’t going to renew the contract.”
