DX is the UK's largest mail network, outside of Royal Mail. The leading alternative service for time-critical business mail since 1975 through its Document Exchange business, the DX network now spans some 27 service centres and 14 satellites, employs some 1400 people and processes over one million items of mail each night. In 2003, DX was awarded the first long-term postal services licence, allowing it to deliver direct to the doors of businesses and provide a greater range of services. In November 2004, DX demerged from its former parent company, Hays plc and was listed as an independent entity on the London Stock Exchange.

As part of the Hays Group, DX received IT services from Hays Logistics. In preparation for the potential sale or demerger, DX needed to become autonomous in the provision of these services. The best way of doing this at the time was through short-term outsourcing contracts. Thus, if DX was sold, the new owner would not be hampered by a large IT overhead.

In the event, DX became a separately listed company. It was still felt that outsourcing met the requirements of the business, in terms of managing the infrastructure, providing access to new technologies and capacity for growth. The supplier selected to manage DX's entire server operations, including SAP, Track and Trace, Call Centre management and other business applications was Attenda. The transition to Attenda was achieved smoothly and in an impressively short time. In a matter of weeks DX had broken away from Hays, moved all of their 25 servers, together with the applications they hosted, to Attenda's data centre, implemented their own version of SAP, upgraded all of the servers and operating systems and implemented Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint.

Business requirements change however and IT capabilities must also evolve to meet them. The first thing that Seán O'Donahue did on his arrival at DX was to review the IT arrangements which were in place and assess their suitability for moving forward. He took a radical approach, terminating many outsourcing contracts, but retaining the services of Attenda. "Virtually everything was taken apart," explains Seán. "Most of the contracts were just not right for DX and they were very expensive. Attenda is the one of the few to remain. They add value to what we do, they are excellent partners and I have been very impressed by them as a group."

A further challenge was to build up a skilled in-house IT team. With the operational infrastructure taken care of by Attenda, this team would be able to focus on delivering effective new business systems. Originally, there were very few dedicated IT people within DX and the department had a very low profile. Since Seán's arrival, new skills have been brought in, with the addition of some 30 IT professionals. "The reputation of the IT group has been totally transformed," says Seán. "This is the result of our achievements over the last year, which, together with Attenda's performance, have been visible to everyone in the company and throughout the service depots." Whereas investment in IT was not happening before, funds are now being made available by the DX Board of Directors.

Given this investment and more positive attitude generally, it has been easier for Seán and his team to introduce further changes. One result of this is that the remit of Attenda's contract with DX has been broadened, so that in addition to running all of the company's messaging and email clusters (Microsoft Exchange plus the recent additions of the Blackberry Enterprise and Vodafone GPRS servers) and the web applications (currently the focus of an in-house pilot to enable on-line ordering), Attenda has been selected to manage the SAP applications in place of the incumbent supplier."

Seán stated that he has every confidence in giving Attenda the added responsibility. "Our existing relationship with Attenda is good. They show the necessary commitment to SAP - as well as their existing expertise, they have augmented this with the recruitment of two experienced, ex-SAP directors. With Attenda operating our SAP systems we will also make considerable cost savings compared with our previous supplier - about £100,000 per year."

Firstly, Attenda provides a high quality service and the flexibility to meet DX's specific business requirements. DX runs a 24 x 6 operation, shortly to become 24 x 7, with the peak-time for critical system availability occurring in the evening. It is vital to DX's business that the tracking and sorting systems remain available during these peak hours of activity. The service level agreement (SLA) provided by Attenda is based on this model and reflects the fact that availability needs to vary by service, by day and by time of day.

In terms of performance, prior to Attenda taking over the management of the servers, the loss of a critical system happened on an almost weekly basis. Today, DX's IT managers cannot recall when their servers were not available. The systems are managed and monitored much more effectively and are much more resilient.

In conjunction with DX's IT department, Attenda has delivered increased reliability of systems. DX processes more than 17 million transactions each month. These need to be tracked, stored and archived. Six gigabytes of information is added to the data-warehouse daily and this figure is growing.

Attenda provides expert knowledge, experience and a high level of professionalism. Seán has identified 54 major projects to be carried out over the next three years and he is confident that every one will involve Attenda.

DX's IT team also recognises the value of implementing the ITIL based processes employed by Attenda in the management of their systems. "They put in place the proper methods and methodologies and this forces us to be more disciplined in our approach too - they provide proper governance, and this limits the mistakes that can be made."

It goes without saying that with Attenda running the operational systems, the IT team can be freed up to focus on the many new projects. From a personal perspective, however, perhaps the final comment on the benefits of working with Attenda should come from Seán: "We are a 24-hour operation and IT is a 24-hour business. Since Attenda is taking care of all of our operational systems, a personal benefit is that I no longer have to take support calls at 3 o'clock in the morning and can sleep soundly knowing that problems will be resolved."