A clear view from a critical friend

Client: Clarity

Industry: Health and care transformation

Location: Remote

Highstream’s involvement: IT partner

Project completion: March 2024 – on-going

Services: Working with a fully remote team, within the healthcare sector, Clarity is a health and care transformation partner. The company needed to ensure that its IT was fit-for purpose and met all the stringent compliance accreditation required by the healthcare sector, from ISO 9001, Quality Management Systems (QMS) and Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), through to Cyber Essentials Plus. In addition, with a growing team, the company identified a need to professionalise its IT capability further.

Having previously had a small internal team who supported its digital needs alongside their usual roles, Clarity decided to look for a partner who could support its digital first approach. It needed to ensure that the company could appropriately support its staff and continue the development of its cyber security and asset management.

Highstream was approached to take on the centralised IT management role for the business. This included supporting all employees during office hours, maintaining security compliance and the onboarding of all new starters and assets.

As part of its remit, Highstream took steps to improve Clarity’s security score, reduce resolution times for its IT issues, and streamline the asset management onboarding and offboarding of employees. This also included an overall IT health check, which covered everything from battery health to the security score of the business. Highstream also reviewed all necessary policies and made recommendations to enhance protection.

Previously, the internal IT team had been responsible for the IT alongside their own area of expertise, which meant that support and keeping up with skills and training was a challenge. The team needed to free up their time to concentrate on their own consultation work. At the point that Highstream was onboarded, the business had gone through a period of rapid growth, and it was imperative that the IT infrastructure was in place to deal with the growth.

Working remotely, staff are all subject matter experts, who work on highly sensitive, individual projects, that deal with change management within the public sector in the UK and internationally. Whilst experts in their field, each member of the team has a different level of IT knowledge, but it is imperative that every team member is IT compliant. Highstream act as the ‘first port of call’ with any IT issue, ensuring the systems are safe and future-proofing where required.

Since onboarding, Highstream has worked with Clarity to develop a robust relationship, providing an effective and professional service, and acting as a critical friend, offering advice and guidance on best practice. As the IT industry continues to develop, Highstream can offer timely and accurate support. While the previously internal team would have had to research a solution, Highstream is able to use its extensive knowledge to quickly provide the best outcome. As well as extensive IT knowledge, clear communication, respect and professionalism are key elements to the success of the relationship to date.

Catherine Grant, business manager at Clarity explained: “Since Highstream was onboarded in March 2024, the team has displayed the level of knowledge and professionalism we were looking for from our IT partner. Since then, the feedback from our team on their services has been excellent. It has saved us so much time and provided us with the confidence in our systems that we need when working with our clients. I would not hesitate to recommend them as an IT partner of choice.”