Enhancing agility and innovation to realise business value

We are in the solutions business. And we have re-imagined managed services to resolve the technology problems your organisation faces. It is a value-led approach to managed services which aims to make a real difference to your business.

This approach enables you to save time, cost and risk by continually improving your technology estates, ensuring it drives value for your business.

From operational maintenance through to optimisation, we are trusted, sustainable managed service experts with a wealth of industry sector experience including Oracle Cloud, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.

Diagram showing what each letter of ASPIRE stands for

What does ASPIRE stand for? 

The six letters each represent a key area in our managed service framework. These areas, also known as pillars, were carefully selected to reflect the emerging trends and drivers in the managed service market. Implementing the components of the ASPIRE framework together, promotes improved results and equips you for future success.

A is for Automate – redefining the managed service experience with AI

This reflects our commitment to using world-class automation processes and tooling to automate the daily grind. This helps to optimise budgets and unlock strategic potential, freeing up your resources to enhance your bottom line.  Leveraging the power of AI and data analytics, we can streamline your operations, increase productivity and unlock new levels of efficiency.

Our automation strategy is built around the concept of automate first, self-service next, and manual intervention last. This means we seek every opportunity to automate tasks that are repetitive, error-prone, or highly intensive.

Separately, we leverage the investment and capabilities in our world-class tooling, platforms and in the power of AI to allow you to complete tasks without the need for extensive manual input.

Essentially, we are removing manual intervention as much as possible from the day-to-day support and maintenance activities, reserving that effort for higher-value work that makes a real difference to your business.

Simplify – remove complexity, embrace simplicity

Simplifying and streamlining the way you consume managed services is core to our ASPIRE Managed Services framework. With an everchanging technology landscape, it’s important we remove the complexity for users.

This approach will assist you in keeping pace with contemporary user expectations. It includes creating systems that prioritise user experience from the start, ensuring they meet changing demands.

We monitor customer journeys through regular end user forums ensuring your digital experience is managed effectively. Our user forums enable digital adoption to be fast tracked and benefits realised.

User experience is considered such an important facet of managed services today, we made the important decision to tie it into our  Value Level Agreement (VLA) and eXperience Level Agreement (XLA) approach.

And finally, reducing complexity in our customer’s license estate is a critical element of cost optimisation. Version 1’s team of experienced license specialists provide critical governance and strategic vendor management for your enterprise software estate in the cloud or on-premises.

Protect – comprehensive proactive security

As technology and innovation continue to advance rapidly, it’s crucial that our security measures evolve just as quickly to protect against emerging threats. Ensuring robust security protocols and staying ahead of potential vulnerabilities is essential for maintaining trust and safety in our increasingly digital world.

With over two decades of experience in delivering managed services, we continue to adapt to the many industry and sector-specific standards, frameworks and certifications required to service our diverse customer base. We are an ITIL aligned, externally accredited ISO organisation. We undergo regular vigorous audits for world-class information security certifications including Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.

We secure your data, minimise downtime and allay compliance worries. We proactively design security into system architecture as well as understand and leverage all the capabilities of our platform and tuning,to bolster your security and be robustly compliant.

Innovate – create value through insights

ASPIRE is at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge technologies to not only support but also enhance and transform your systems. This approach ensures that you benefit from the latest advancements, driving efficiency and innovation in your operations.

Managed service providers have long since assisted organisations in keeping their enterprise software running smoothly, securely, reliably and cost-effectively.

Whilst these principles remain important in today’s environment of revolutionary technological change and industry disruption, they are no longer sufficient.

Within ASPIRE managed services, we look for insight on specific business objectives and ideate around how we can bring innovative new ways of working. We assess our partner and vendor innovation and co-create roadmaps to understand how the latest technologies impact your business, and how deploying new innovations can deliver real tangible benefits.

Realise – meaningful performance indicators

We relentlessly focus on identifying, agreeing, and achieving meaningful KPIs for our customers.

With SLAs alone, there is a good chance you will be a victim of the watermelon effect. The watermelon effect is where everything is green on the outside according to SLAs but red on the inside in terms of user experiences and real business value.

  • Value Level Agreements (VLAs) provides a shift in focus to business value. Through a defined ‘VLA in a Day’ process, we identify key issues or opportunities to make changes that impact specific business outcomes. In partnership, we agree on metrics that matter, and measure the improvements through the defined Value Level Agreements
  • Together we have both a moral and a strategic imperative to care about sustainability and specifically carbon emissions. We embed the tracking of carbon emissions in our Cloud managed service and continually look at ways to optimise services to reduce the environmental impact. We call this our Carbon Level Agreement (CLA)
  • Putting the user at the heart of our services is vital. Through a defined framework we measure the experiences that matter most. In examining the touch points with our managed services, we baseline and measure improvements through agreed Experience Level Agreements (XLAs)

Investing together in transparent, outcome-based value-level agreements, will ensure you see the return on investment you deserve.

Evolve – adapt to a shifting landscape

This pillar reflects the fact that systems must always adapt.  Standing still is not an option. Services become progressively less valuable unless they persistently evolve and adapt to shifting landscapes.

Our job as a managed service provider is to ensure that we’re always seeking to enhance and optimise your estate so that this continues to deliver value back to your business. We do this in a number of ways:

  • Aligning culturally and embedding the right relationships and behaviours between Version 1 and your business is vitally important. Through cultural alignment sessions we bring teams together to harmonise ways of working
  • A well-defined agile approach to continually improving current services is put in place from day 1 of transition. A Continual Service Improvement backlog is jointly prioritised and delivered against through defined sprints
  • Our portfolio is always evolving to meet your demands and market shifts. Clear roadmap services plotted against horizons enables a constant flow of improved portfolio services for consumption
  • As well as technology horizons, Version 1 regularly evolves our processes and delivery models to ensure the very best value for money

How can we help you

One customer which has benefitted from our ASPIRE Managed Services is the UK and Ireland’s largest commercial publisher, Reach plc. This collaboration will see Version 1 deliver digital and service transformation under its ASPIRE framework, including innovation, intelligent automation, and streamlining of services. Read more on the partnership, its strategic aims and delivery success.

We have highly skilled, certified specialists, all backed by industry leading processes, partnerships and tooling that underpins our operational excellence.

By partnering with a managed service partner with experience, expertise and the proven results, you can allay concerns around support and maintenance. ASPIRE Managed Services can help you break free from technical debt, pivot like a pro and outpace your competition with a modern infrastructure.

Visit our ASPIRE Managed Services website page or talk to us for more information.