May 2021
Keeping Evergreen Garden Care fertile 24/7 with global support
Waterstons’ customer intimate approach drives our business; so much so that when demand from customers in new cities or territories arises, we’ll react. Offices in London, Glasgow, Sydney and Perth in Australia are all testament to this approach – wherever you need us, we’re with you.
Technical Director
Results at a glance
- A more resiliant global network
- Improved performance on systems and increased business efficiency.
- Improved service and security.
- Greater global collaboration.
We’ve worked in partnership with Evergreen Garden Care since their carve-out from a previous parent, Scotts in 2017.
During the transition, we helped with an interim CIO, project and programme management, deploying new technical infrastructure, and consultancy support for their SAP roll-out across the globe. So we were already familiar with the business, and of course they knew us pretty well too.
Since the transition work ended, we’ve provided on-going Managed Services in partnership with their internal IT team, looking after their infrastructure and looking to continuously improve the IT service overall. We’ve provided service management, 3rd line escalated support, onsite technical support and kept a close eye on Evergreen’s infrastructure ever since through our 24x7 NOC (network operations centre).
Part of the reason we opened our office in Australia, was to meet Evergreen’s own challenges over there. One of our team has been working part-time for Evergreen in Australia since early 2020.
It was a great opportunity to deepen our partnership and to improve the overall service to Evergreen. With our focus on always doing the best for our customers, we took these opportunities very seriously – and we’ve been rewarded with great feedback from Evergreen on the level of service they’ve received, and the quality of support and maintenance given.
We’ve also focused on improving resilience and reliability; having our office in Australia has its challenges, it also gives us great opportunity – with our Service Desk now able to offer a staffed 24/7 support package. Our UK team hands over support to their Australian counterparts on a ‘follow the sun’ basis, meaning we’ve provided Evergreen Australia with support during working hours whilst also maintaining and upgrading systems in their out-of-hours; meaning reduced in-hours downtime and more reliable and resilient systems.
Of course, the 24/7 model also means Evergreen Garden Care in Europe benefit from the same advantage in reverse, with the team in Australia able to take care of downtime windows for maintenance, patching, and the like during their normal working day. No matter where in the world Evergreen Garden Care staff log on, they can be assured that their systems are up-to-date and ready to go, safe in the knowledge that downtime during the working day will be very rare.
These new ways of working with Waterstons as their global 24/7 support partner have been well-received by Evergreen; with improved support service, an open and transparent partnership approach and consistent support outcomes day and night.
"Our business runs across continents and around the clock, so our partners need to do the same. The 24/7 service desk has proven itself in supporting our business with large and small issues"
Martin Lofnes
CFO
All over the world, Evergreen’s customers trust their products to help their gardens grow; and Evergreen trusts Waterstons to give them the tools they need, all day, every day, to help their business do the same.
Good support isn’t just about fixing things when they break. It’s giving businesses nutrition to grow.