Client: @sipp

HQ: Glasgow, Scotland

UK Employees: 50 approx, in Glasgow and Essex

Silver Cloud client since: 2021

The background

@sipp is a financial services business that offers a range of self-invested pension products and services for people that want to take more control over their pension savings. Privately owned and completely independent, it has nearly £2billion under management and around 4,400 clients.

Central to its proposition is expertise, service and support. Where other financial services companies have call centers, and the personal element is often distinctly lacking in their customer relationships, @sipp go to great lengths to build long-term and meaningful relationships with their clients and distributors. In short, for @sipp service is not an added extra: it’s a fundamental component of their competitive proposition.

The challenge

@sipp is growing fast, and it currently has twice as many staff as it did just a few years ago. As always, one of the challenges that comes with rapid growth is making sure that all your infrastructure keeps up – premises, communications technology and everything else. In 2021, @sipp decided that it was time to review their entire IT and telecoms estate. Angela Barr, Head of Change, says: “To deliver a high-standard professional service to our clients, we need all our suppliers to do the same for us.”

Angela decided to look for a new supplier that was on @sipp’s wavelength. “I wanted an IT partner that shared our core values, and I knew instantly that that was Silver Cloud. I knew some of the people there already, and I also met the CEO Tony, who was down-to-earth and genuinely cared about his people and the service they delivered to their customers. Silver Cloud understood straightaway what I needed. They were also very proactive: whereas some suppliers might wait until something falls over before they take action to solve the problem, Silver Cloud were able to spot potential weaknesses in our set-up and address them before anything went wrong.”

Our solution

We were able to meet all of @sipp’s needs for IT, telecoms and connectivity: much more convenient for them than dealing with several different suppliers.

Our in-house support team, working to contractually agreed service levels, gives @sipp the confidence that any problems will be dealt with quickly and efficiently, with minimal disruption to their team or – even more importantly – their clients.

We also thoroughly assessed the company’s IT set-up and suggested several important improvements, such as an enhanced disaster recovery system, server consolidation and automated daily server checks.

The result

Angela says: “By outsourcing our IT, telecoms and connectivity to Silver Cloud, we get access to a wide range of expertise from a large team. Much more than you’d ever get from just one person if you employed your own IT manager in-house. It was a big decision to change our IT support and not one that I took lightly. It was important to me to have a provider that I knew was just a phone call away, was familiar with our network and setup, and provided a high level of customer service.

The improved back-up and disaster recovery processes, the way that Silver Cloud proactively manage our IT, the fast and expert tech support, and the excellent customer service… all of those things give me great peace of mind. To say I’m delighted with Silver Cloud is an understatement. I hope our relationship continues for many years to come”.