I . T .
Partnership - Bondgate IT prides itself on clear communication with customers . PICTURE : STUART BOULTON
are , and we fix them first . “ The world of IT is ever-changing . For example , two-years ago ChatGPT wasn ’ t a part of our language , so we perform our audit every year and every year we add another year to the IT strategy . It ’ s a partnership which becomes ever developing .
“ We don ’ t talk in ‘ technical speak ’ to customers ,” he adds . “ We ’ ve got technical people who do technical things , but as a business we talk in a language our customers understand .
“ We work with them , understand what they do , understand what their technical risks are and then put it in language that they can understand , and more importantly action .
“ We ’ ll say , ‘ You ’ ve got this system and you ’ ve got this risk to mitigate against ’.”
It ’ s clear that when it comes to maintaining a healthy IT system , prevention is much better than the cure .
And with Bondgate IT , businesses aren ’ t just engaging an outside contractor , they ’ re forging a long-term partnership .
“ Customers don ’ t treat us as a supplier , they treat us as a partner – an extension of their team ,” says Andy , before explaining how the relationship typically begins .
We can put a plan in place to avoid a potential systems breakdown and resulting business interruption .”
“ If we onboard a new client our onboarding process takes four weeks . That means we would visit a site , gather our knowledge on their systems , perform our technology performance audit and then we would start to create the risk matrix .
“ Once we ’ ve identified the risks , we would use that risk matrix to create a three-year IT strategy .
“ We know what good looks like . We ’ re the experts for our professional opinion and we tell the customer where their biggest risks are within the business , and we tell them how we can fix those risks .
“ We almost act as an IT director , so we like customers to be embedded with us , to treat us as an extension of their team rather than looking at us as a supplier – it ’ s a partnership .
Bondgate IT is based in Darlington . For more information , call 01325 369950 or visit bondgate . co . uk .
“ As part of our cyber-offering , we train people as well . We protect devices but we train people because they are potential entry points for cyber threats .”
As part of an ongoing commitment , Bondgate IT holds quarterly strategic IT meetings with clients to ensure key issues are resolved , any new problems are identified and a timeframe is agreed to resolve those issues .
The partnership between the customer and Bondgate IT certainly isn ’ t an arms-length relationship .
Each client is allocated a dedicated client success manager to act in that strategic role . They work with the customer to create a road map / strategy .
Bondgate IT ’ s technical solutions team conducts the audit and the support team deals with the day-today issues , support tickets and service requests .
“ It ’ s good to talk to people ,” insists Andy . “ If we get a service call , our first approach is to pick up the phone and speak to the user . We ’ re not about playing email tennis . Our culture is to pick up the phone and speak to the customer .”
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