CASE STUDY

Tysers

To stay ahead in the mid-tier insurance broking market, Tysers needed its services to be supported by cloud-first, forward-thinking IT infrastructure that enables its people to thrive in a world of hybrid working.

Staying ahead of the market with cloud-first, forward-thinking and robust IT

Based at the heart of the world’s premier insurance market in London, Tysers handles in excess of £2.75bn of annual premiums working with leading (re)insurance markets worldwide to deliver risk solutions to a global client base. Tysers prides itself on providing forward-thinking, nimble solutions and, more than being simply a service provider, acting as a partner and advisor to its clients.

Industry:

Finance & insurance

Organisation Size:

1,200+ employees

Solutions:

Azure & cloud, Microsoft 365, Fresh, professional services, managed services, digital transformation

Completion date:

January 2022

The challenge

Rapid growth from several acquisitions had resulted in the business dealing with multiple teams, platforms, applications and tools, all of which were hampering proper integration and paralysing IT operations.

Group-legacy, end-user compute, and an on-premises data centre environment were both limiting organisational agility, thereby increasing risk and cost, and eroding acquisition returns.

Internal and external communication and collaboration challenges, post-acquisition, were also exacerbated by Covid-19 remote working, and the need to accelerate the solutions to these issues, in the form of a digital transformation roadmap, was even more urgently required.

The approach

We were selected as a long-term partner to implement a Digital Workplace and guide the integration and transformation of IT systems. In addition to this, Tysers had already selected us for their service desk and infrastructure management.

Our team worked in partnership with Tysers to develop a business case outlining the solutions, timelines, costs and long-term benefits of the proposed project. The business case was the primary factor in attaining buy-in at board level for the project.

A clearly defined business change and adoption strategy was put in place to profile and understand end users within the business, which in turn informed the deployment, roll-out and training requirements the business would need. The Tysers ‘Work Anywhere Project’ was then designed to transform the way Tysers’ users could operate, improve security and be an ‘all cloud’ model removing all reliance on on-premise infrastructure.

The solution

Digitally transformed legacy estate to cloud utilising Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop and Modern Workplace for end users.
Transition of on-premises infrastructure to 100% Azure through the use of Azure Migration tools-based assessment and migration (rehosting) of Windows servers and SQL workloads on Windows servers.
Migration to Azure of SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016 Standard and 2016 Datacenter, as well as newly provisioning Windows Server 2019 Datacenter.
Modern Workplace communication and collaboration solutions were implemented and surfaced internally through Fresh intranet.
Following work to reduce the number of applications, the key line of business applications access was supported by deployment of Azure Virtual Desktop.
Device as a service (DaaS) was added to support the shift to hybrid working amid the pandemic and beyond, as well as enhance onboarding for new employees.

The outcome

Tysers is on track to meet its goal of operating fully in a secure, accessible and self-managing digital workplace, significantly improving security, experience, and ability to operate.
There is now a common approach within the business to transforming and securing the way users work, enabling remote working and improving collaboration.
An Azure-centric approach has led to reduced application footprint and improvement in business continuity.
Significant improvements in security through full E5 and Azure both for access and management of business information.
End-user satisfaction has increased across the business, with ServiceNow bringing internal and external teams together.
The business will see a direct cost benefit over five years, through a 50% reduction in office space requirements.
Integrated services have enabled licence and vendor rationalisation, also reducing costs.
Fresh intranet has increased group-wide communication and collaboration.

"Microsoft Azure was the clear winner for us because of the investment that’s been put into it. The scalability, the ability to manage and maintain it and the licensing model all formed part of why we wanted to go in that direction."

Steve Jolley

CIO, Tysers

The future

With a strong focus on momentum, agility and futureproofing its business, Tysers continues to work with Advania to deliver its digital transformation into the coming years.

The ongoing services and support we provide are designed to ensure Tysers continues to adapt as it evolves, enabling the organisation to focus on being a data-driven, digital-first and digital-forward business.

Kick-starting its digital transformation also means systems and technologies inherited through any future acquisitions, can be quickly and efficiently integrated.

Products and services

Fully managed Service Desk
Full infrastructure management
Consultancy, planning and implementation
Microsoft Teams deployment and adoption
Managed Desktop Service
ITSM tooling
Fresh
M365 E5 plus support
Landing Zone Migration to Azure
SharePoint
Azure Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Azure Distributed File System
Business change and adoption consultancy

Our Impact

100 +

seats migrated
to Microsoft
Cloud

1 %

reduction in
Central London
office space
requirements

1 %

REDUCTION IN
SUPPORT
INCIDENTS

1 %

CSAT score,
up from 4.5
(out of 5)

"Following a series of acquisitions, we were struggling with the ability to grow and scale. Our infrastructure was mostly on-premises, which inhibited us from growing at scale. We started looking at how that could be changed to move our infrastructure and apps into the cloud to enable scalability."

Steve Jolley

CIO, Tysers

Let’s find out how we can help you

Whether you’re facing similar challenges to peers across your industry, or you have a unique need for something different – speak to us to find out what we can do.