ITS is a provider of information technology services specialized in user support. The company offers a comprehensive range of IT maintenance and infrastructure services for small and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations.
Established in 1996, ITS serves more than 100 clients from all branches of industry across Switzerland today. The company employs 150 support professionals, including 130 agents and technicians ready to respond to the clients’ needs and 20 IT engineers dedicated to the special IT requirements of small and medium-sized businesses.
ITS is a member of Veltigroup, a leading Swiss information and communication technology services provider with four specialist companies – LANexpert, Insentia, ITS and Veltigroup Consulting – and a total of 450 employees. As a user support company, ITS employs highly qualified people with strong technological skills and excellent soft skills.
“If a customer calls our service desk, he wants a technical problem to be solved,” says David Seppey, CEO of ITS since January 2014 and previous director of the company’s small and medium-sized businesses unit. “At the same time, the caller might be displeased and annoyed. Our support agents therefore need to listen very carefully, stay polite and show empathy.”
ITS offers proactive and continuous maintenance services for its clients’ IT infrastructures at a fixed price. “We assure satisfactory operation of our customers’ IT services and provide professional, high-quality support to their users,” explains Mr. Seppey.
Phone support is provided between 7 am and 6:30 pm and includes remote control of workstations and configuration and management of printers. Support services also comprise continuous monitoring of servers, monitoring of data backups as well as security and antivirus management.
In addition, ITS service engineers pay regular visits to customers and provide support in IT infrastructure development and meeting documentation requirements. The company’s services for large enterprises include delegation and replacement, deployment and migration, outsourcing as well as training and coaching.
ITS service desk and workplace professionals are at the customer’s service to provide temporary support in case of peak demand or to meet planned or unplanned absences of the client’s own staff. In the area of deployment and migration, ITS manages upgrade projects for the customer’s workstations, including everything from project management to deploying the new IT infrastructure through to the migration and evolution of workplaces.
Outsourcing of service desk activities is another option for customers of ITS. “This gives our clients the guarantee of a professional service through a local and flexible specialist partner,” states Mr. Seppey. “We provide an expert team of service desk professionals and the customer is enabled to focus on his core competences.”
Last but not least, ITS offers individual training and coaching services. The company has its own training center, the ITS Academy, where technicians are trained to optimize the customer’s support processes. The academy is dedicated to service desk and workplace skills and offers a comprehensive training programme covering both technical skills and psychological skills, such as active listening or managing difficult situations.
In the area of workplace management, ITS has developed a new, flexible and time-saving concept: the IT Corner. “The IT Corner is a service desk in large enterprises staffed with ITS support people and targeted at the growing number of mobile users,” Mr. Seppey describes the unique concept. “Instead of a support technician visiting the user at his workplace, the user comes to the IT Corner with his mobile device to get technical support or advice. It is a very flexible support concept which saves the client a lot of time.”
ITS has specialized sales teams for small and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises. “Small and medium- sized businesses have different requirements compared to those of larger corporations,” explains Mr. Seppey. “In small firms, we talk to the managing director or chief financial officer, people that are no IT experts. In large enterprises, our contacts are experienced IT managers.”
In the past three years, ITS has doubled its number of clients and revenues in Switzerland. Mr. Seppey attributes the company’s sustained success primarily to the exclusive focus of ITS on user support: “Our top priority is the user, not technology.”
Another reason is that ITS’ services are very flexible as the client has three basic options: user support through ITS’ service desk, support at the customer’s facilities through ITS staff or a combination of both. To continue growing, ITS is developing new, innovative support concepts such as smartsourcing instead of outsourcing.
“Many clients want to keep their IT under control and require only partial support,” states Mr. Seppey. “In this case, we add to the customer team and bring in our expertise.”