Company overview
Jera IT, an IT services provider, was formed three years ago as part of a merger between Clarks IT and One Stop IT. Specialising in managed IT support and cybersecurity solutions, they offer a comprehensive suite of services to help business stay secure and efficient.
Managing Director of Jera IT – Ally Hollins-Kirk, took the time to share Jera’s experience of consolidating their security stack with Heimdal after merging the two companies, and the support they received from Brigantia.
The challenge of merging two companies
Merging two companies is a complex process across many areas of a business, one area which Jera IT hadn’t considered when joining Clarks IT and One Stop IT was the unexpected challenges around their product stack.
On paper, both teams were similar in many ways, but in reality, the company was faced with two teams who were used to two separate product sets. So, Jera were faced with half a team who had used Heimdal and half who hadn’t. The problem this created was clients in some areas were often being supported by a team who didn’t know them or the product set yet, and they suddenly had engineers needing to learn two sets of products - taking up a lot of time, resource and ultimately making it an unprofitable process.
As Jera IT moved forward as one company, the challenge was working out how to bring the two product sets together to create a stack that everybody is happy with and is confident supporting clients with.
This is where Brigantia and Heimdal came in.
How Brigantia helped Jera IT consolidate with Heimdal
At Brigantia, we’ve built our reputation on delivering added value support to our partners so they can maximise opportunities through our vendor portfolio.
We do this through our specialist team like our Business Development Manager, Harry Evans and Product Specialists like Jack Poulter. Harry worked closely with Jera IT to help them achieve the efficiency they needed with their product stack.
For Jera IT, Heimdal was the ideal product to address their challenges, and our Heimdal Product Specialist, Jack was on hand to assist Jera’s team in getting the most out of the product. Jack delivered demos of the Heimdal suite and various modules - supporting Jera to trial new parts of the product that the team had not used before. This allowed them to fine tune varying setups and get the product to what the customer will experience when Jera fully deploys it.
Throughout the training process, Jera’s team were able to ask all the questions they needed to really understand the product, and Brigantia’s team took them through every detail - from what it looks like to how it actually works.
What was the impact of implementing Heimdal with Brigantia?
Jera IT went from having two separate product stacks for their newly merged team to understand and deliver, to one team that was fully trained in one product.
Heimdal consolidated 9 of Jera’s security tools into one suite – a significant reduction in their product stack. By consolidating, they now provide clients with a foundation security stack with Heimdal and clients are benefitting from robust, comprehensive protection. And, Jera is saving substantial amounts of time through reducing product training for their team and the time it takes to resolve tickets.
Deployment is simple, particularly for existing Heimdal customers, with modules easily switched on from the Heimdal dashboard when needed. With one platform, with all modules included, Jera’s clients are protected no matter what, and by providing all clients with a foundation security stack, Jera have eliminated the back-and-forth discussions with clients on what products they do or don’t need.
Simplifying their security offering has allowed Jera’s team to spend more time building relationships with clients, increasing their quality of service.
Describe your experience of working with Heimdal and Brigantia?
Ally Hollins-Kirk, Managing Director of Jera IT commented:
“We've recently joined the partner advisory board at Heimdal. And I really like that idea where they can get direct feedback from the companies that they are helping, and actually go like, well, actually, if it did this it would make a difference here or it would help our effective rate here or it’d reduce our engineer load …
Companies that actually spend a bit of time listening to the clients in the long run will perform better. In a situation like this, it can't just be that one way transaction, right? It's a partnership, you want that back and forth, you want that give and take. If you don't have that, it all goes wrong.
I enjoy working with Brigantia. My approach is very direct - I just say, look, here's where I need to get to, here's the problems I have, what can you do?
They go away and think about it and they come back with a workable solution. There's no dancing or any nonsense. It’s just let's see what we can do, and actually that's probably my favourite part of working with them.
When you are speaking with Brigantia, you're pretty close to the voice of authority. They feel like they're on your side. But the reality is they're also representing their partners as well. And I think they get that balance right.”
