Desktop Support (Remote and Onsite) · Case study
Onsite and Remote Desktop Support With VIP Cover for Three Financial Offices.
How onsite engineers, a shared remote queue and a VIP lane are scoped for a three-office financial firm.
Representative scenario. Last reviewed October 2026.
Engagement profile
- Customer
- Financial services firm with three offices and a VIP user group
- Scale
- 3 offices, about 450 users, about 25 VIP users
- Where
- United KingdomIreland
Representative scenario. This case study shows how Deploris scopes and delivers this kind of work. It does not describe a real client, and no results are claimed. Want a plan like this for your own sites? Request a quote.
Quick answer
What does this engagement look like?
Desktop support for a financial services firm with offices in London, Manchester and Dublin combines a named onsite engineer at each office, a shared remote queue and a separate VIP lane for senior users. Deploris agrees coverage hours, access rules and escalation paths in writing, assigns one engagement manager, and hands over a runbook, a VIP protocol and monthly service reports.
THE CHALLENGE
The challenge.
The customer is a mid-sized financial services firm whose users sit in three offices across two countries. Its internal IT team is small and based mostly in London, so Manchester and Dublin rely on remote help and on whoever happens to be nearby. Tickets arrive by email, chat and walk-up requests, and nobody can say which office generates which kind of incident. A group of about 25 senior users, including executives, traders and board members, expects an answer in minutes and often reaches a named technician by phone, which bypasses the ticket queue entirely.
The difficulty is that three different expectations have to be served by one service. Most users need predictable first-line fixes: password resets, Teams and Outlook problems, docking stations, printing, VPN and multifactor prompts. VIP users need discretion, speed and a technician who arrives before they have to ask twice. The firm also handles confidential client and market data, so every engineer who touches a VIP laptop or sits in a trading-adjacent area must be vetted, briefed and limited to least privilege. Layered on top are office-specific realities: managed buildings with their own access rules, different public holidays, and a cross-border office in Dublin where moving a spare laptop is not as simple as a courier run.
Constraints the plan had to respect
- Each building controls entry: London and Manchester towers use reception pre-registration and escorted access out of hours, and Dublin's managed offices apply their own visitor rules. Engineer names must be submitted in advance.
- Spare devices and peripherals cannot be assumed to move freely between Great Britain and Ireland, because customs paperwork can apply, so Dublin needs its own pool of spares.
- Engineers use the firm's ITSM tool, remote access tooling and endpoint management accounts under least privilege, with no standing local administrator rights on user devices.
- Working-time and holiday rules differ between the UK and Ireland, including bank holidays that fall on different dates, so cover must be planned per office rather than copied across.
- The firm's compliance team decides which devices, rooms and systems are off limits during sensitive periods, and the service must follow those decisions without asking for exceptions.
HOW THE WORK RUNS
How the work is run.
- 1
Profile demand and map each office
The engagement manager collects six months of exported tickets from the firm's ITSM tool and categorizes them by office, category and hour of day. Walkthroughs of each office record desk layout, meeting rooms with Teams Rooms or Zoom kit, print rooms, comms cupboards and the location of spare stock. Output: a demand profile showing where onsite presence earns its place and which categories can be handled remotely.
- 2
Write the scope, hours and service tiers
A written scope sets standard hours per office, because UK and Irish holiday calendars differ, plus the VIP lane with its own response expectations, the escalation path for anything beyond desktop level, and clear boundaries such as what is handled by the network or identity teams. The 4-hour priority dispatch target for covered metros during business hours is stated alongside 24/7 remote hands. Pricing is engagement-based with no lock-in, so hours can be adjusted after the first review.
- 3
Vet engineers and clear building access
Deploris selects vetted, background-checked engineers matched to the firm's stack, for example Windows 11 on Intune with Autopilot, a Jamf-managed Mac group, and multifactor tokens. Names are pre-registered with each building's reception or facilities team, and an onboarding pack covers badge handling, escalation contacts, clean desk expectations and a confidentiality briefing. VIP-lane engineers are briefed on handling devices that hold sensitive material and on not copying or storing any user data locally.
- 4
Run the VIP protocol and parallel shadowing
The VIP lane is built as a short list of named users, their devices, home and travel setups, preferred contact method and a pre-agreed first action per incident type, such as swap-first with a pre-staged loaner laptop and troubleshoot afterward. For two weeks the new engineers work alongside the internal team, take tickets under supervision, and test the remote access procedure, including how the user consents to a remote session. Shadowing ends only when the internal IT lead confirms the runbooks match how the firm actually works.
- 5
Steady state with reviews and a closeout pack
Day to day, engineers log every incident in the firm's ITSM tool and escalate through the agreed path. Weekly ticket reviews catch repeat causes, such as a faulty dock model or an expiring certificate, and a monthly report summarizes ticket categories, open items and recommended fixes. Every onsite visit that involves hardware ends with a closeout note: what was changed, photos of the setup where useful, asset tag updates and test results, so the firm's asset register stays accurate.
WHAT WAS PRODUCED
What the engagement delivers.
Each item links to a full guide with its scope, process and FAQs.
WHAT THE CUSTOMER ENDS UP WITH
What the customer ends up with.
- 01A written scope that names the coverage hours, VIP lane rules, escalation path and out-of-scope boundaries for each of the three offices.
- 02A VIP register and protocol covering named users, devices, preferred contact methods, loaner stock and the first action for each common incident.
- 03A runbook set for first-line incidents, remote session consent, hardware swaps and building access, usable by any new engineer on the desk.
- 04Per-office spares lists and asset records, including a separate pool for Dublin, so a failed dock or monitor can be replaced without cross-border shipping.
- 05A reporting template for monthly service reviews that shows ticket categories, repeat causes and recommendations, ready for the firm's IT leadership.
WHAT APPLIES TO YOUR PROJECT
Decisions that apply to similar projects.
Treat the VIP group as a defined service lane, not an informal favor. Writing down who qualifies, what the first action is and who is told afterward keeps the experience predictable and stops the main queue from being skipped.
Give every country its own spare pool and its own calendar. Shipping devices across a border and assuming identical bank holidays are the two assumptions that most often break multi-country desk cover.
Run the engineers in parallel with the internal team before cutover. Two weeks of shadowing exposes undocumented habits, such as an unwritten approval step or a quirky VPN profile, before they can cause a missed ticket.
WHERE IT APPLIES
Metros in this scenario.
Local engineers in each metro, coordinated by one engagement manager. Open a metro to see local details.
QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions.
How is VIP desktop support different from standard desktop support?
Can one provider cover offices in both the UK and Ireland?
How do engineers handle confidential data on financial services devices?
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