Ranked within the top 10 fastest growing IT services providers in the UK, 2e2 has a number of impressive statistics to support this image. One example is the number of customers, which exceeds 1,000 and includes many high profile businesses, such as Philips, British Airways, Pret A Manger and a variety of others including government bodies, healthcare service providers and high profile media operations.

Employing more than 1500 people, the company delivers a variety of services to its clients in the  handling of their IT requirements. It supplies a diverse selection of managed and professional services that incorporates unified communications and data management options.

With technology continuing to advance at a relentless pace, 2e2’s specialist and professional services have become key to its clients’ operations. By outsourcing their IT requirements they are able to take advantage of the 2e2 knowledge and skill base, maintaining the high standards essential for modern businesses in this area, yet saving money when compared with costs applied to in-house operations.

With annual revenues of more than £240m, I found it surprising that the company remains privately owned. Its accolades include the winning of 49 industry awards in the last five years, triple ISO certification for its ITIL compliant onshore managed service centres and accreditation from high profile vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and EMC.

Peter Davies, systems analyst for 2e2 and responsible for its field service engineers, explained to Service Management how the company first looked at mobile communications in 1994 with a view to improving communication with its engineers. Mobile phones and pagers were used in the field, but the company decided to reengineer its entire process and began looking at mobile data solutions.

After considering the various systems and providers operating at the time, the final decision was made in favour of Cognito, described by Davies as ticking the right boxes and providing a good fit with his company’s operation. This then moved to the trial stage, with 2e2 choosing a team of 10 engineers working on a British Telecom project in East Anglia. After two weeks, the operation was deemed a success and the system was gradually rolled out to the rest of the company.

Davies was keen to emphasise that although the company had remained a customer of Cognito since then, it was by no means a guaranteed arrangement. 2e2 had upgraded its mobile communications a number of times and continued to look at other suppliers, but had remained with its original choice after careful consideration.

An example of this occurred in 2000, when GPRS networks became more widely available and accessible to handheld devices. 2e2 studied the options available from six suppliers, before remaining with its existing supplier.

‘Since then, we’ve had a number of revamps,’ Davies explained. ‘We’ve got a Cognito application that has dealt with core happenings and a subset of the logistics-type functions and we’re currently in a project that is building on that so that we can make the repair loop slightly tighter.’

The intention is to issue instructions to the engineer when it is more beneficial for parts to be sent direct to the repairer, rather than returned to the company. This is a further indication of how 2e2 constantly reviews its operation to make savings that ensure a competitive service continues to be delivered.

Calls to the company are handled by the Leo service management system from Hamilton Hall, which links directly with 2e2’s mobile data application. ‘We’ve got quite a sophisticated back end set-up, which we’ve had for a number of years,’ Davies continued. ‘Many of our customers can actually log calls automatically with us, rather than speaking to an operator over an EDI link.’

He further explained that this was not compulsory, however, and that customers could choose to speak to an operator directly. For those that choose the automatic route, however, calls are frequently routed through the system direct to an engineer. ‘It’s end to end, without any handling if need be. The first person to see a call could be an engineer on the end of Cognito, so to speak,’ said Davies.

The information supplied to engineers in relation to the service call is virtually as good as looking at the 2e2 database, said Davies: “ . . . including the SLAs, the time scales he’s got to work to, the parts that have been supplied or are needed for the job, all technical details,  full addresses and the addresses of parts that need to be collected, effectively a full record of the job.’

Messages sent by engineers in the field are automatically stored with the record of the call and also sent to the customer, who benefits from near real time communication. The current project to improve the company’s logistical operation is intended to be completed by October. Benefits will include the faster processing and distribution of parts both to and from the customer, the supply of dynamic instructions to and from the field and ensure disposal of parts and equipment in line with the WEEE directive.

This will allow 2e2 to ensure it meets the variety of SLAs involved in its dealings with clients, some of which require response within four hours with coverage provided 24 hours a day throughout the year.

The company also uses automatic scheduling to handle many of its service calls and the uses the W6 version of the Clicksoftware solution. This is aligned with the company’s two other systems to provide a seamless and sophisticated service operation.

Having embarked on a number of system updates and roll outs over the years, Davies now describes these as not particularly difficult to implement, as long as they are carefully planned in advance. The intelligence of the company’s highly qualified engineers also helps with this, he stated. When new technology for items such as hand held devices becomes available, these are now merely sent directly to engineers with the appropriate instruction. Two devices currently used in the field are the Vodafone BPX90 and V160S.

The early adoption of mobile communications has paid obvious dividends to the 2e2 service operation and the company remains determined to keep up to date with further technological advancements, providing considerable benefit to its own operation and that of its many clients.