With headquarters in the UK and branch offices in France, Poland and Germany, Quantum Search & Selection Ltd is a leading recruitment solutions provider that specialises in the placement of high-caliber individuals across the manufacturing and automotive sectors.  The company employs more than 30 specialised consultants, many of whom bring experience from both industry and recruitment to the benefit of Quantum’s international client base.

As Quantum operates in a highly specialised sector of recruitment, upholding a flexible and agile level of service delivery for its manufacturing and automotive clients is essential to achieve continued growth and business success.

The challenge: delivering a seamless working experience for branch office users

To keep their fingers on the pulse of the recruitment industry, Quantum’s senior management team needs to visit and travel among the firm’s European locations on a regular basis, sharing information on clients and cementing its geographical reach.  To optimise their productivity and provide responsive customer service, Quantum must deliver real-time information access for these staff when they are away from the head office.

In order to remotely access information and applications that were running centrally in its UK headquarters, Quantum implemented a thin-client solution recommended by an existing IT supplier.  Whilst this particular thin-client solution enabled real-time access, system response times were very poor and localised printing was almost impossible.

Julian Farmer, operations director at Quantum, outlined the problems.  “Our existing thin-client solution was severely limiting the ability of our staff to work while moving between our offices.  Printing locally was a nightmare, connectivity was so slow it was virtually unusable, and our servers kept going down because load balancing just wasn’t possible.  Even minor things were frustrating; for example, the system didn’t support USB devices.”

To fulfill its clients’ placement requirements, Quantum needs to have candidate information and role descriptions at its fingertips.  With the existing thin client solution hindering printing and only sporadically providing access to database information, Quantum’s staff were struggling to deliver the optimum level of response times to both clients and candidates.  Quantum desperately needed to review its access infrastructure to solve remote connectivity and printing issues.

Implementing Citrix Access Essentials to improve branch office connectivity

After assessing various solutions, Quantum chose Citrix Access Essentials™ to address the IT issues within its branch offices.  Axis First, a Silver Citrix Solution Advisor and Quantum’s existing IT support provider, deployed Citrix Access Essentials with Microsoft® Small Business Server for 20 of the firm’s recruitment consultants.

Axis First utilised three servers to facilitate the Citrix solution: two newly sourced HP ML350G5 servers and a reprovisioned Intel chassis.  The first new server was used to host Quantum’s business-critical applications, including Microsoft® Office, Sage Accounts and RDB – a specialised recruitment application.  The second server was used to run Microsoft Small Business Server, and the reprovisioned server was utilised as a secondary failover server to provide complete system resilience.

The new application server was prepared off site in advance and then brought online in Quantum’s UK head office.  As soon as the new HP servers were up and running, the existing server was taken offline and reprovisioned as a failover server using Windows Server® 2003.  Of the 20 Citrix user licences purchased, four users are based in France, 10 in Poland and six in the UK’s head office.  Each office continued to use its existing method of Internet connection: the UK using a pair of ADSL lines and the European offices using locally provisioned connectivity.

Farmer commented “The whole implementation was completed in just two days.  Even though the implementation took place during normal working hours, our 20 new Citrix users didn’t experience any disruption of service whatsoever.  It’s of huge benefit that the new solution has solved our print issues; it was so frustrating and time-consuming for remote users before, and now they are able to print without problems.”

Provisioning of new staff in a growing organisation made easy

In an uncertain business climate, Quantum is fortunate enough to be experiencing healthy growth and is increasing staffing levels across Europe.  Citrix Access Essentials has enabled the firm to provision IT services for new team members, regardless of location, much faster than was previously possible, enabling the firm to satisfy clients on an international scale more quickly than before.

Such a dynamic approach to international expansion is an essential part of Quantum’s competitive advantage, as explained by Quantum’s managing director, Gerald Andrews.  “The planned opening of our new, larger Paris office highlights the fact that we are benefiting from clients who can’t find a high-quality recruitment partner with a genuine pan-European approach.”

The new solution also streamlines IT administration. “By leveraging the remote administration features offered by Citrix Access Essentials, we are able to set up a new user quickly and effectively without having to visit a branch office, saving us the time and travel expenses of an IT professional to visit the site.” Farmer commented.

Duration of branch connectivity improved by up to 40%

Quantum’s staff relies heavily on RDB, a specialised recruitment application used for database and curriculum vitae (CV) management.  Andrews explained why it is critical for the firm’s branches to share such information on an international basis.  “If we have a position to fill in Poland we don’t just look locally; we use all our offices to look across Europe.”  To ensure that Quantum matches the best possible candidates to its clients’ needs, the firm’s branch office staff requires real-time information to be readily available and provisioned effectively to their desktops.

Farmer outlined the impact of inadequate connectivity for the firm.  “When our branch office staff can’t connect to RDB, our recruitment software application, they can’t work - it’s as simple as that.  So when Citrix Access Essentials drastically improved connectivity rates for our branch users, it improved application delivery and response times, which had an immediate and positive impact on their productivity levels.”

Reducing time spent supporting IT by 25%

As operations director, Julian Farmer has sole responsibility for the management and support of Quantum’s IT infrastructure support.  By reducing the number of issues experienced by branch office users, Citrix Access Essentials has reduced the volume of support calls coming into him, a welcome release for an operations director wanting to focus on more strategic areas of the business.

Support issues have also been reduced because server load balancing is now in place, enabling user requests to be spread between the two servers as required.  “I used to get several calls a week from users with various problems, the majority with printing or connectivity response time issues.  Citrix has made connectivity far more reliable, so users hardly ever fail to connect and printing locally is really easy now.  I can honestly say that since we’ve adopted Citrix Access Essentials, I only get about one call a month, which means I’ve got much more time to focus on tasks that take the business forward.” Farmer commented.

Axis First looked at several options to replace its existing thin-client solution, but value for the money, speed of connectivity and load balancing capability made the decision to go with Access Essentials relatively easy.  Printing remotely is no longer an issue for Quantum, as centrally held documents are now seamlessly printed at branch offices, which means staff have the tools and information they need at their fingertips.

By enabling its consultants to access and share real-time information, Citrix Access Essentials has helped Quantum to seamlessly deliver a truly pan-European recruitment service to its clients.

About Citrix Access Essentials

Citrix Access Essentials™, an application virtualization solution for small businesses, enables small organizations with 5 to 75 users to securely access order entry, billing, scheduling, CRM, accounting and other centralized Windows-based line-of-business applications over the Internet with just a Web browser. This cost-effective software turns a Windows Server® into the secure access point for applications, files, and internal websites, making centrally maintained information as easy to update and query from home, while traveling, or from Internet cafes, as it is from the main office.

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