supporting you - our approach

Taking a people-centred approach to IT Support

For Grant McGregor, IT Support is not just about servers and computers – it’s really much more about the people.

We enjoy getting to know our different clients, their very different businesses and their sometimes unique end-users.

Our staff genuinely enjoy helping to support our clients and their businesses and doing a good day's work. It's also all about good, clear communication on both sides, setting honest and accurate expectations and working hard to deliver on our promises.

These aspects of our work are of greatest importance to us and are the key part of our 'Grant McGregor Personality'.

That's why we work hard to select and reward the very best IT technicians who have the perfect blend of technical IT expertise and the softer people skills to bring their knowledge to bear patiently to help a frustrated end-user.

Make your users jump for IT!

Patient, empathetic IT technicians; more reliable IT systems; and responsive support mechanisms all help to build trust and confidence in your IT systems and in our IT support service.

When your people get more confident and trusting in their IT systems, it's amazing how much more effective your IT suddenly seems AND how productive the users become!

Communicating with you

We provide all clients with a personal technical account manager to develop an intimate understanding of your technical set-up alongside an account director to oversee your support arrangements and ensures we are doing a great job for you.

You get their mobile numbers for any IT problems requiring immediate attention; to discuss ongoing IT plans; to talk about the latest IT gadget you spotted in the airport; or just to discuss the price of fish!

That's the kind of close relationships we have with our clients so that we can work well together for your common IT goals.

You can also contact us at our office, where any member of our friendly support team will be happy to help you.

Our structured approach to supporting your IT systems that's far from typical

All clients are different! Hopefully, you will have already grasped that we do not follow a 'template service' or 'one-size fits all' approach to providing IT support services to our clients. We do accept that all clients have certain specific needs but also every new client that we take on has a different IT history.

Different how? Well, the existing state of their IT systems always differs - sometimes the hardware and software is perfectly fit for purpose, in other cases it is poor. Client perceptions of IT are always coloured by the experiences new clients have had with previous IT support providers and how effectively they have been serviced - or not!

Our new client focus begins with developing positive working relationships with clients, building trust and confidence and taking IT headaches away from your team. You ought to be able to take it as read that we have the IT expertise, experience, track record and systems to provide responsive and reliable support to your users and to ensure your IT systems planning is on the right track. Otherwise, we really shouldn't be in the IT Support business!

But where we really differ is that our IT team genuinely and quickly becomes part of your key business team. 

Our people-centred approach, our technical prowess and the empathetic style of our carefully selected support staff combine to engender a real feeling of us both being on the same side.

Our Step by Step approach to supporting your IT systems

1. An honest start point for us both and some 'quick IT wins'. We start by auditing your systems, creating an inventory and a 'System State' report to give you an honest appraisal of what you have and any problems that need to be sorted. Then we seek to quickly address any urgent existing IT problems that your systems and your users are suffering from. This quickly establishes some trust and some confidence that IT is no longer a burden to them.



2. Systematic support and preparation. Next, we establish the proactive systems monitoring that checks, alerts and reports on your system health and performance all day long. This allows us to react to IT events before your employees even notice or suffer as a result. We also implement the support systems and helpdesk request processes for when new system niggles do occur or things go awry with servers, PCs or internet connectivity.
   
   The fact is that things do go wrong with IT systems from time to time. We aim to reduce the effect of such problems and design them out where possible (subject to sensibility and budgets, of course!)



3. Reliability and ongoing development. Finally, in line with your business goals, we seek to build-in more reliability to your systems and to develop them across time to meet your medium and longer-term business goals for growth, competitive advantage or just for decent levels of staff productivity.
   

Put simply, we provide an efficient, uncomplicated IT support system that works! Sounds easy and, frankly, IT should be!

The Grant McGregor IT Support Helpdesk and PSA System

On a day to day basis, our clients send us an email (categorised according to urgency) through to our Edinburgh based IT Support Helpdesk. This links seamlessly into our Professional Services Automation (PSA) Support System and automatically creates a new support case. This can also be done online or via the telephone when, for example, the problem relates to your email not working.

Our PSA system immediately alerts your account manager, account director and duty helpdesk technician to your issue. They can then assess and investigate the problem as soon as possible according to the priority and Service Level Agreement (SLA) in force. You will always be kept updated on the progress of your case as it progresses but you are able to review your live support cases and case history online via your own Grant McGregor PSA Portal.

Grant McGregor support staff also track all technical requests through to completion. Your account manager will look out for you and your account director will make sure your helpdesk cases are promptly followed up. Where cases require more intervention to be resolved such as a site visit, repair, reinstallation or IT equipment enhancement, the case gets converted to a site visit or mini-project to be scheduled accordingly. We also analyse cases for commonly-occurring issues, which may require further intervention, enhancement, equipment replacement or staff training.

For more information about the Grant McGregor support philosophy, see About Us or Why Choose Us?