Morgan Hunt is a multi-award-winning recruitment agency with over 150 consultants providing specialist recruitment services to over 2,000 clients across the UK. Since its inception in 1994, family values have been vital to the company’s success, informing the lasting relationships built with employees, candidates, and clients.
These values attracted Sam Porter to the Head of IT role at Morgan Hunt - but he also stepped into a business with extremely complex IT systems. The thinking behind these systems was understandable; a highly advanced infrastructure can look attractive at first glance - but as he dug deeper, he realised it also created enormous costs, multiple potential failure points, and a series of knock-on risks for the company.
Sam acknowledged a need for additional support and specialist knowledge in Morgan Hunt’s IT infrastructure - but it was neither practical nor cost-effective to grow the in-house team. As such, finding a service provider who could connect with the business in a true partnership fashion became the next logical step.
Sam’s background in IT meant he was already aware of 3Gi, but when he first sat down with the team, he explained that the approach was different from that of other managed service providers he’d experienced.
“From the very first meeting, 3Gi wanted to know everything. It was never about trying to fit us into a service level agreement - to this day, we’ve never had an SLA conversation. I knew immediately that this genuine interest in everything we were doing and how IT could best serve the business would mean they were the perfect fit.”
Sam Porter - Morgan Hunt’s Head of IT
We’ve explored Morgan Hunt’s Migration to the Cloud in a dedicated technical case study - but in summary, prior to Sam and the 3Gi CIOaaS partnership, the technology infrastructure relied on ageing physical servers in a local data centre with traditional service pools. As well as presenting a series of risks associated with an array of third-party products across a complex management landscape, this kind of architecture brought with it substantial costs.
A significant part of what makes 3Gi’s service stand out is our attitude towards clients’ finances. By thinking about money from a CIO’s perspective, we can truly put ourselves in our customer’s shoes. As well as the security and management enhancements that would come from a migration to AWS cloud infrastructure, we were able to outline tangible reductions in IT-related costs.
Of course, a migration of this kind is no small task - and with that comes some financial outlay. Our position as an advanced AWS partner meant being able to access additional time and resources from AWS funding programmes - all of which were handled with absolute transparency and passed on in full to Morgan Hunt.
“When service providers can access additional funds, they’re often absorbed into their own businesses - but this has never been the case with 3Gi. Jonathan has been clear that these funds were there to reduce the burden on Morgan Hunt or to make sure we could go the extra mile to achieve the goals we had in mind.”
Sam Porter - Morgan Hunt’s Head of IT
The AWS Cloud Migration project has been just one in a series of challenges and opportunities that 3Gi has worked side-by-side with Morgan Hunt to overcome and achieve. From consolidating systems and overcoming security issues through to working directly with the company’s team to formulate best practices, our person-to-person communication and collaboration channels are always open.
Sam and his team value the fact that we work differently from most other MSPs. There’s no helpdesk ‘ticket’ system acting as a buffer between 3Gi and the businesses we support - and there’s definitely no deferring to FAQs or support documents when Morgan Hunt reaches out. When Sam and his team pick up the phone or send an email, a real person at our end is ready to answer the question or take the next step.
At the moment, Sam explains that he’s happy with how the partnership works - but we don’t rest on our laurels. Whether dealing with routine weekly and monthly tasks or approaching a new project, what’s in Morgan Hunt’s best interest is also in ours. With this in mind, we’re looking for ways to keep the relationship seamless and our goals on exactly the same track, exactly as you would expect from an in-house CIO.
While some service providers would see a lack of strict SLA as a problem, we view it differently. When Morgan Hunt talks to us about their roadmap as a business, we know Sam values the fact that our sole focus is on the opportunity rather than adding additional support hours to an invoice.
In fact, we’re often involved in conversations that don’t require 3Gi’s input either immediately or further down the line. By understanding the conversation and overall context, we’re then well-placed to provide input if technology is involved - even long into the future. This approach also means we can talk about IT solutions that might not otherwise be considered - especially as the world of AI and machine learning is becoming more and more accessible for businesses who might not otherwise see the opportunity or application.
Currently, we’re exploring AI/ML solutions for Morgan Hunt, meaning they can offer even more to candidates and clients who use their recruitment services. With 3Gi team members who are at the absolute cutting edge of machine learning - we’re able to share ideas that will help the company maintain its reputation as forward-thinking recruiters supporting outstanding organisations in the charity, education, finance, government, housing, professional services, property & construction, social care & health and technology sectors.
“At the end of 2023, the management team here at Morgan Hunt reviewed all our supplier agreements with a view to what was required into 2024. When we came to 3Gi, we were looking at a report detailing 6-figure costs saved and 5-figure sums of additional funding for our digital transformation projects. So, what’s needed from 3Gi going forward? More of the same!”
Sam Porter - Morgan Hunt’s Head of IT