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A dynamic business, Enva achieves growth both organically and through a strategy of targeted acquisitions. Dan Bloor, Head of IT Service Delivery at Enva, was tasked with creating common systems and processes across the group, as well as integrating the new sites that are continually being brought into the group.

The challenge

With a number of different companies brought together under the Enva brand, the existing IT infrastructure was a combination of four different longstanding contracts with major providers, none of which was particularly cost-effective.

It was a priority for Dan to create a unified network that could enable the both the operational day-to-day work and the digital transformation project work being undertaken across the group.

“We’re currently rolling out a new comms system across the group and we plan to introduce centralised shared services. We’re also standardising IT systems and rolling out a new cloud-hosted finance system and operational systems. Before we could do any of this, we needed to create a network that would allow us to share those systems across all sites easily.”
Dan Bloor
Head of IT Service Delivery at Enva

Enva selected Backbone to provide the WAN that would enable Enva to bring its four business units together and, at the same time, reduce the overall cost of its network.

The solution 

The new WAN has enabled users to work from anywhere, and Enva has enjoyed additional, unexpected benefits – in particular, around service flexibility. Some cost savings were felt immediately; for example, removing the international call costs to Enva’s site in the Republic of Ireland.  

“Backbone are a lot quicker to respond and a lot more flexible than other providers. We’ll have a circuit ordered for a new site within 48 hours. And if we say we need a connection tomorrow, Backbone will find a way to get the VPN connection on the existing lines. They’ll help us work on the existing network to get things as we need them until they can provide a permanent solution for us.”
Dan Bloor
Head of IT Service Delivery at Enva

While the original goals were to create a global WAN and reduce costs, that evolved as the project progressed, with Enva entrusting Backbone with more and more of its IT support.

“I originally saw Backbone as just another network aggregator before I started working with them,” he says. “But, actually, they do a lot more – from network design to out-of-the-box thinking, Backbone will do it for you. You don’t get this from other service providers.”
Dan Bloor
Head of IT Service Delivery at Enva

This greater agility and speed is highly prized by a company growing rapidly through acquisition.

The result

Enva has achieved its goal of a unified network with a strong cost efficiency. The company was most impressed because this cost reduction has been achieved at the same time as introducing resiliency across all Enva’s key sites and increasing bandwidth ten-fold.

“The digital transformation work we’re doing is about delivering real-time information to our customers. The large-scale investment in technology we’re making is about differentiating ourselves. It all relies on our systems and, ultimately, our network.” 
Richard Weald
Head of IT

With the exception of two very remote sites, all connections are no less than 100Mbps. This has enabled IT improvements that reduce the company’s reliance on Citrix and Remote Desktop – giving Dan one less thing to manage.

“We try to keep our IT team as lean as possible and rely on good partners. Backbone is absolutely a good partner: they are quick to react, they have good engineers and a good project management team. It’s unusual to have access to senior technical people so easily. They rarely say no. Even if it is an unusual request, they will find a way to help us. The engineers never complain, even when they’re working in some of our most challenging environments. They’ve performed exactly as we’d hoped and priced everything exactly as they quoted in the original tender. They are now managing our LAN for us and assisting with architecture and design work.”

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