Cloud player Auxilion scoops up I.T. Alliance and Trade Facilitate business

17 Aug 2012

Tim Willoughby of Trade Facilitate with Eleanor Graham of Auxilion

New cloud computing firm Auxilion is on a growth curve as parent company I.T. Alliance moves all of its cloud support to the subsidiary. It has also snapped up new business from import/export enabler Trade Facilitate and All Water Systems.

Auxilion was formally launched in June following a €1m investment.

“We are eating our own breakfast, such is our confidence in the service,” said Philip Maguire, CEO, I.T. Alliance Group.

Outsourcing cloud support

Irish-owned Trade Facilitate helps importers and exporters across the world to declare trade documentation using an EU Certified UNCEFACT compliance paper-free online system. Recent legislation across the world requires that trade documentation must arrive before the goods do. The company developed its systems on the cloud using Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform.

“TradeFacilitate is the first and only EU-validated service allowing importers and exporters to exchange goods data electronically so we wanted to roll the service out quickly,” said Tim Willoughby, CEO, Trade Facilitate. “However, we recognised that this would place severe pressure on our internal support services and resources. We considered hiring and housing a large team of customer service and technical support staff but it was cost prohibitive. ”

Trade Facilitate took the decision to outsource the cloud support and selected Auxilion following a global search. Auxilion designed and implemented a self-service portal which Trade Facilitate clients can go to first for support. This is backed up by Auxilion’s virtual support centre in Dublin, which provides remote customer support service via the phone, email and web.

Self-service portal

“This meant we were able to quickly support thousands of importers and exporters from around the globe, handle millions of trade documents and liaise with government and regulatory agencies in a secure manner,” Willoughby added. 

Auxilion built its self-service portal on the Microsoft .NET framework. The portal enables clients to securely log incidents, problems and service requests via a customer support function. 

When the phone rings, an email query sent in or a support request logged via the portal, Auxilion’s virtual agents, acting on behalf of Trade Facilitate, provide the frontline response. 

Auxilion works with Trade Facilitate support team to resolve service and support requests, working to defined processes and ITIL-aligned Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

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John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com