As we head into autumn, we find ourselves pulling out warm jumpers and preparing for the clocks going back with dark mornings and evenings and of course the festive season. October is a month of transformation. The leaves change colour and the chill in the air returns.

It has been a while since our last newsletter, but as you read on it becomes clear that we have not been idly resting during the summer. Indeed we will not be going into winter hibernation, far from it. We are pleased to say that we have been extremely busy across all of our offices, working on modernisation and transformation projects as well as our business as usual activities.

It has certainly been an interesting year so far for OCS Consulting. As you know, being client centric means we are happy to invest in matching the needs of our clients, sometimes howeVer, this leads to changes at OCS and these last few months have really started to take us in a new direction. Modernisation!

With new projects, developments and internal training in Cloud technologies such as Azure, AWS and Salesforce. We have new investment in our speciality areas of Cash Management, Publishing and Lifesciences and greater geo-graphic diversification in Switzerland (www.ocs -consulting.ch).

It is starting to feel rather modern around here.

Of course some things won’t change as some of our staff are hitting 25 years’ service with the company, including me. Namely, you will still always be able to count on the same level of commitment and effort even from the modern OCS.

Investing in our clients, being in a position to support our clients, showing commitment to our clients. This is what OCS is about, what makes OCS different and why our contacts and clients come back year after year.

Finally, thank you again for your continued support of OCS over the year.

I hope you enjoy finding out what we have been up to. If there is anything of interest or a problem you need solving please do get in touch.

All the best,

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive

As we head into autumn, we find ourselves pulling out warm jumpers and preparing for the clocks going back with dark mornings and evenings and of course the festive season. October is a month of transformation. The leaves change colour and the chill in the air returns.

It has been a while since our last newsletter, but as you read on it becomes clear that we have not been idly resting during the summer. Indeed we will not be going into winter hibernation, far from it. We are pleased to say that we have been extremely busy across all of our offices, working on modernisation and transformation projects as well as our business as usual activities.

It has certainly been an interesting year so far for OCS Consulting. As you know, being client centric means we are happy to invest in matching the needs of our clients, sometimes howeVer, this leads to changes at OCS and these last few months have really started to take us in a new direction. Modernisation!

With new projects, developments and internal training in Cloud technologies such as Azure, AWS and Salesforce. We have new investment in our speciality areas of Cash Management, Publishing and Lifesciences and greater geo-graphic diversification in Switzerland (www.ocs -consulting.ch).

It is starting to feel rather modern around here.

Of course some things won’t change as some of our staff are hitting 25 years’ service with the company, including me. Namely, you will still always be able to count on the same level of commitment and effort even from the modern OCS.

Investing in our clients, being in a position to support our clients, showing commitment to our clients. This is what OCS is about, what makes OCS different and why our contacts and clients come back year after year.

Finally, thank you again for your continued support of OCS over the year.

I hope you enjoy finding out what we have been up to. If there is anything of interest or a problem you need solving please do get in touch.

All the best,

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive

As another summer draws to a close and we enjoy the last of the warm weather, we at OCS start to look back at the past few months. Summer certainly got off to a bumpy start in the UK; turmoil of EU vote and a meltdown in Westminster, our best-forgotten football fiasco in France alongside the wettest June the UK has ever seen; but it’s safe to say that the come August, Rio 2016 certainly gave us a summer to remember (for the right reasons). Team GB’s amazing performance certainly provided something to celebrate as the entire country savoured in the glory of GB’s success. Winning an amazing 27 golds this Olympics has been our most successful and thrilling to watch and coupled with the remarkable performance in the para-Olympics it was really spectacular.

I think that one of the things that made this Olympics so exciting was the variety of success and the combination of the old and the new. On one hand, old favourites dominated again, Farah’s double double of course springs to mind, and in some cases Team GB predictably conquered entire sports, winning eleven medals in cycling. On the other hand, it was the new faces and unexpected events that have contributed to the Olympic fever. Max Whitlock’s double gold in gymnastics brought an end to a 108-year gold drought in the sport and the nail biting penalty shootout against the Netherlands saw the woman’s hockey team sweep to victory. Of course, the thrill of this was tempered by the thought of our Dutch colleagues as there is always a healthy rivalry between us 🙂

 At OCS, we feel like we have had a successful summer as well, winning a few golds of our own. Just like Bolt, we won our very own triple gold with a third project for a long term major client of ours. Retaining such work with a valued client is evidence of the hard work and dedication that our staff have put in and demonstrates the importance of enduring relationships for OCS.  We won some golds in new areas, such as our first Azure project and a first SAS support contract in the UK and keeping up with the gymnasts our flexible services also gained success. The combination of retaining long term clients and investing in new areas keeps OCS moving forward as we strive to keep on developing and growing as a company.

In the international arena we also had success, despite Brexit OCS continues to strengthen its ties with Europe with greater collaboration with Holland who are providing services to our UK SAS client as we reciprocate on .NET and Web based services.  Furthermore, OCS moving beyond the EU has gained two new clients in major organisations in Geneva, Switzerland. It has been a while since we have worked from Switzerland and we are looking forward to working in Geneva again with such a truly international organisation.

Moving into Autumn, OCS has some new challenges and projects ahead.  See overleaf for more information and I hope to catch up with many of you over the coming months.

All the best,

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive

Just after the millennium the major focus of OCS’ strategy changed from being technology focussed towards being fully client-centric. In doing so we geared up to recruit, train and invest in a wide range of skills and services in order to be able to be flexible enough to support our client’s needs whatever they were. Over the years demands have changed but we continually adapt enabling us to support our clients whether it be changing technology or just differing delivery models.

The idea was that that if we could grow and change with our clients then that would both provide sustainability for OCS but also being a unique match as a supplier to our clients. And so it is, after so many years clients keep on coming back, often asking if we could embark on new projects, learn new technologies, and deliver new types of services. What’s more, and a little unexpected, is the experience we have built up appeals greatly to new clients who can see the benefits of our breadth of experience and quickly recognise how this could be useful to them.

Of course, none of this would be possible if the quality and method of our delivery wasn’t so strong. It means that however we are originally commissioned, clients quickly warm to our approach.

In some cases, we are engaged by a client for a software or application development project and the success of the project leads them to return to OCS for more general IT services and consultancy. In other cases, clients come to us for on-site staff secondment, consultancy or lifecycle services and once this relationship is established and the client is aware of our staff, skills and capabilities it makes us an obvious supplier for new work. 

In many cases, what started out as a short-term piece of work has grown into a long-term relationship where OCS integrates into the client’s existing IT supply chain providing a strong IT partner for a multitude of projects, services and technologies.

So why do so many of our relationships flourish into long-lasting ones? We are told time and time again, that simply, they like us and the work we do. They like our ethics, business values, staff and our commitment to quality, flexibility and doing the best for our client. Embarking on large IT projects and transformations can often be a daunting task for companies. It often includes periods of uncertainty, research, trial and error and unexpected problems. By working with an IT service provider that is familiar, this daunting task becomes a lot less so, as a client knows it is not taking a gamble on our staff and expertise. I guess it’s about trust, and our clients know and trust that we will do our best, that they are important to us and that we will put the success of the project first. 

Some of our relationships have lasted over twenty years and are still going strong – something that we are particularly proud off considering just how much the IT landscape has changed over this period. In order for this to be possible, OCS has always kept itself on its toes, never becoming complacent.  After all, these relationships are at the heart of our company and we value them greatly. This is also reflected in the personal side of these relationships that have gone from strength to strength, something that was wonderfully obvious during our 30^th birthday celebrations two years ago.

All the best,

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive

Here at OCS, we know that efficient management of resources is a key foundation on which any successful business operation is built. This is particularly the case in the IT department with the multiple call on resources for projects and operational support. This is a difficult task at any time but today with the current IT skills gap in the job market this means that it is becoming even more essential to maximise the skills available to you.

In order to optimise the use of resources, many of our clients come to us to utilise our staff based flexible resourcing services. We offer an easily accessible third party service that can be called upon to handle the peaks and troughs of demand as well as other resourcing challenges that crop up from time to time such as illness, sickness, maternity, attrition and the movement of staff between different projects.

Usually when companies experience a shortfall of staff for whatever reason, or require a person with skills set not present in their current internal staff, they can turn to recruitment agencies and freelance consultants in order to fill the gap. Whilst this can sometimes be successful, it is not without its limitations, which can range from not being able to find a consultant willing to commit to shorts pieces of work, to not being able to find someone who has the right non-technical skills.

By using our flexible resourcing services, we are able to help clients overcome these problems by offering a far more personal service which can be tailored to the specific needs of each company; we know that one size does not fit all! Not only does a more personalised solution lead to finding the best people for the job, but it also leads to more cost and time effective solutions.

OCS operate a permanent staff team which means we are able to offer more options to our client’s IT needs. We can offer resources for short, medium, or long-term periods of time, or indeed part-time, meaning our clients are only paying for what they need, and exactly when they need it. Familiarisation with the client’s system and environment takes place on the first assignment and then they can then be called on at different stages of the project to utilise their skills and knowledge.  In addition, clients are able to pre-book our staff for future work, resulting in cost and time efficiency.

Our central focus is to do all we can to make sure that the staff we have are well matched to the IT needs and culture of our clients. This strategy permeates through everything we do from recruitment to career development. When considering the right consultants to recruit, we take into account much more than the necessary technical skills. We want to make sure that the matching process is more individual than that. We aim to recruit staff that are the right fit for our clients in terms of culture and soft skills.

Furthermore, during our staff’s development, we are constantly looking to make sure skills are aligned to our client base both for current work but also for the future.  This highly client centric approach to the recruitment and development of staff ensures that our staff are perfectly matched to our clients, resulting in hugely successful long term partnerships.

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive

What great fun it’s been this year, celebrating our 30th anniversary with friends, colleagues and customers. It’s given me a wonderful opportunity to get together with so many of you to reminisce about the changes we’ve seen over the last 30 years as well as talking about what we will face in the next 30. That’s what I love about this job and the IT industry - it’s constantly changing, evolving and transforming how we work, rest and play!
 
Talking of change, as I look back over this last year, one thing we have noticed is a significant increase in OCS’ involvement in corporate transformation programmes. But what does this mean? The Oxford Dictionary describes Transformation as a marked change in form, nature, or appearance. These few words do little to prepare one of the effort, resource and time required to affect such an impact, as nowadays, these tend to be about enterprise-wide changes encompassing the whole spectrum of business functions as well as IT.
 
Of course, such major change always comes with risks. For those planning and implementing the change programme, we have seen there are a number of key principles that are being adopted to smooth the way. Firstly, stay true to the heart of the business and its objectives. Secondly, utilise the most appropriate resources, providers and solutions to ensure the best fit and thirdly, manage carefully to ensure delivery is high quality and on time to avoid impacting the business.
 
These are also principles that we hold dear at OCS. As you can imagine, we’ve had to adapt and transform ourselves over these last 30 years. We wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t! We’ve stayed true to our culture and way of working, remained flexible and responsive and kept up-to-date with the latest IT.

Indeed, staying true to our strengths has been widely reflected in customer feedback this year. We are known as professional, easy to work with, aligned to our customers’ needs with a strong delivery and quality focus. Every member of the OCS team embodies this spirit, which is critical to our business and, quite frankly, your business. Excellent service is standard and is reflected in the longevity of our customer relationships, many of whom have been working with us for ten years or longer. It just goes to show that not everything in IT changes 🙂

As mentioned earlier, Transformation programmes can be big and complex and as such our speciality is to deliver key streams or components of the programme such as supporting legacy systems, delivering highly specialist expertise and providing cost effective solutions in the areas of integration and systems development.  And that’s why our customers love working with us, we deliver what we commit to and make it happen as we have done for the last 30 years. It may sound a cliché but we are genuine partners in all the work we do. So, If you are going through a transformation project, then do contact us to discuss how we might make your life easier.

Wishing you all the very best this springtime and many thanks again to all of you who have been involved with OCS and celebrated with us over the last 12 months.

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive

More than just quality services

Last week, I was having lunch with a long standing client, who had recently been to our 30^th Anniversary celebration evening in London. He remarked how amazing it was that we should continue to thrive as an independent consultancy after so many years and that there should be so many clients and staff, current and ex, who remain part of our network and wish to be associated with OCS.

I reminded him, that though he has been a client for nearly 10 years, we had met some years before when he came for an interview at OCS as we were recruiting for a Senior Programme Manager to head up a Chip & Pin accreditation project we were running for a major retailer.  He didn’t get the job… but some years later came to us to provide flexible Web Development and Infrastructure Support Services for his organisation, a large US internet subscription company which we have been delivering to ever since.  I asked him what was it that reminded him of us, so much so, that he came to OCS for IT services.  Now there’s a question?

His answer was what I wanted to hear and perhaps the reason why after 30 years OCS remains a thriving independent business. He liked us. He liked our ethics and values and the way we communicated and dealt with him then as a prospective staff member and since then as a client.

We deliver, are loyal, trustworthy, have integrity and above all else committed to making sure that as an OCS client he feels that we go the extra mile to provide the most flexible and quality service that we can. 

Of course, if it was just his view then I’m not sure I would headline with it in this issue, but having received recently dozens of congratulation messages and testimonials (some of which can be found on www.ocs-consulting.eu) from clients and staff alike in response to our 30^th anniversary, I can only  think, there must be something in what he says 🙂

30 years ago Neil Lawrence, founded OCS, after spotting the opportunity to deliver high quality, flexible services in the areas of lifecycle skills, technology and solutions with an ethos of honesty, integrity, friendliness and professionalism. These characteristics have been renewed, updated and re-confirmed again and again over the years.  Today they are strong as they ever were, seems like in a changing world this remains a strong and attractive proposition.

If you should like to experience OCS and would like to know how we may be able to assist with your future IT needs, then do please contact us and we will be delighted to help.

All the best

Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive