Softcat delivers the visibility Future Publishing needs to improve efficiency and enhance end user experience
Project at a Glance
Future Publishing needed greater visibility of its increasingly remote PC estate to improve efficiency and understand end-user experience. Softcat delivered a managed Digital Employee Experience (DEX) solution, underpinned by the Riverbed DEX Intelligence platform, giving the IT team clear insight into performance issues, supporting flexible working and improving productivity across the organisation.
readers across Future Publishing’s magazine portfolio.
specialist media brands managed across its platforms.
Challenge
With widespread flexible working, Future Publishing lacked visibility into its PC estate and could no longer easily monitor the end-user experience. The IT team struggled to pinpoint performance issues, especially with users working in uncontrolled environments like cafés or home networks. This made it difficult to distinguish genuine IT problems from environmental factors and limited the ability to maintain service quality. Future Publishing needed a digital employee experience solution to regain insight and ensure efficient, frustration free working.
Critical Success Factors:
1
Enhanced PC visibility
Improve visibility of PC estate.
2
Proactive IT monitoring
Ensure effective monitoring and resolution of IT issues.
3
Digital employee experience monitoring
Implement digital employee experience solution to monitor and improve IT performance.
Solution
Softcat recommended and delivered a managed DEX service built on the Riverbed DEX Intelligence platform. This solution provided deep visibility into device performance, user experience and IT health across all working environments. By implementing a fit for purpose DEX platform, Softcat helped Future Publishing effectively monitor issues, understand the root causes of performance challenges and maintain consistent IT service quality for employees working anywhere.
- Riverbed Aternity platform
- DEX analysts to help improve user experience
- Managed onboarding and service to reduce impact on in-house IT team
- Monthly DEX workshops hosted by in-house DEX Analyst
Results
The DEX solution enhanced visibility across the PC estate, enabling Future Publishing to proactively identify and resolve IT issues impacting productivity. The organisation now benefits from improved monitoring, clearer insights into root cause problems, and a significantly better end-user experience — even in flexible working environments. Softcat’s implementation ensures IT teams can react faster, reduce frustration for employees and maintain a high standard of service regardless of location.
- Best-in-class service
- Dedicated DEX Analysis team
- Monthly summaries to highlight most pressing IT issues and formulate effective response
Month on month we’re seeing the Experience Score improve. It’s providing a quantitative measure of improvements and helping to reduce the impact on customers –something that would have been much more complicated and challenging without the Softcat team managing it for us. Without the Softcat service, I doubt that we would have made the great progress as quickly as we have. Their insights and support have been invaluable!
Nathan James
Director of IT Services, Future Publishing