CCLA transforms efficiency with high-value, low-cost Causeway Application Management Service from Kainos

London & Belfast, February 21st, 2011 London-based asset manager CCLA has engaged the Application Management Service arm of the IT consulting company, Kainos, to provide critical IT skills and services to the organisation. CCLA provides specialist investment services to not-for-profit organisations. Prompted by an organisation-wide rationalisation programme, CCLA decided to look at alternative, more cost-efficient IT service delivery models. 'Our IT situation internally had become untenable,' explains Sean Curran, CCLA's chief operating officer. 'There is such a wide range of technologies we need to deploy and support that it is impossible, and certainly not cost-efficient, for our own IT people to have all the skills we need.' CCLA was introduced to Kainos and its Causeway Application Management Services organisation through Invest Northern Ireland. Causeway offers a comprehensive range of IT services and combines highly skilled near-shore facilities in Northern Ireland with local account management in London. Initially, Causeway assumed responsibility for CCLA's business-critical dealing and registration system, an arrangement that has worked so well that CCLA now outsources a large proportion of its IT activities, including its IT infrastructure, as a complete managed service to Causeway. This has enabled CCLA to reduce its IT headcount from 10 to just three staff. 'We brought in Causeway because we wanted a better and more flexible level of service than we could provide internally. That's exactly what we got. We now have a high-quality, flexible IT service that is dependable and sustainable, and we meet hard deadlines,' Sean says. 'The Causeway people are highly professional and capable, and have access to a wide range of IT skills. They know our business processes better than some of our own people. The line between where our organisation ends and Causeway begins is invisible to the majority of our staff. In our eyes, that's the essence of a true partnership.'