Asyst International

Service desk and IT company Asyst International has successfully set up a UK base with help and support from UK Trade & Investment.

Brazilian service desk and IT company, Asyst International, specialises in providing IT support for businesses in a range of industries. It counts amongst its diverse client base the likes of pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, and fashion house Louis Vuitton. As a global company focussing on service desk support, Asyst helps its clients not only with basic IT support for packages such as Windows, Microsoft or Novell, but it also offers additional help for wider technology functions, such as network operations and administration, hardware maintenance or telephony support.

In the 25 years since Asyst was formed, the company has adapted the way it serves its clients. For most of its Latin American clients, Asyst offers onsite provision or works through its own service centres. For clients in territories where Asyst does not have its own branch the company delivers its services through strategic alliance partnership programmes. “We have to customise our services to meet our clients’ needs,” says Francisco Ricardo Blagevitch, President for Latin America at Asyst International.

“For instance, São Paulo is a multicultural city with over 14 million inhabitants. Many languages are spoken there, including Japanese, Italian and German and we have found that clients like to speak to people in their own language. We pride ourselves on finding people with the right language skills, accents and IT skills to work in our call centres to make it easier on our clients, and this approach has made us really successful.”

Getting the right help

As well as the support that UKTI offered Asyst, London & Partners was able to help Asyst with practical issues such as finding business lawyers, sorting out bank accounts and recruiting appropriate recruitment consultants to find high quality staff.

A little over three months later, Asyst opened its first London office with two employees dedicated to new business wins.

“I was so impressed with the service that I received from UKTI,” says Francisco. “I have to say that, without their contacts and know-how we would not have been able to have set up a base here in the UK. I consider them as ‘business stimulators’ and I would highly recommend them to other businesses.”