Opening context
Fexco operates a global fintech and payments business across more than twenty offices in Ireland, the UK, and internationally. Its IT function serves an organization that touches financial institutions, governments, and consumers — under regulatory scrutiny, with operations spanning five continents.
The IT function was performing well. When the first independent record ran across more than 1,100 employees, results came in above the global industry benchmark across most categories. That was a strong baseline for an organization of this complexity. It was also, for leadership, a question: with dozens of concurrent projects, a constrained budget, and investment decisions still shaped largely by intuition or the most recent escalation, how confident could they be that the standard would hold?
“The challenge is that you could react to the loudest voice. That is a survey of one — and that is not a good way to figure out where you’re going to place your resources. We needed something better to point to.”
— Karl Aherne, COO
What the record showed
The record didn’t produce surprises across the board. Most of what it showed matched what experienced people already understood. What it added was location-level precision that the ticket data did not supply, and a priority sequence that didn’t depend on who had escalated most recently.
- Network infrastructure. The network was already on the roadmap. What the record added was precision: not just that connectivity was an issue, but which buildings it was most acute in, and in what order improvement would have the most impact. Fexco’s network couldn’t be addressed in a single centralized project — it required building-by-building rollout. The data sequenced that work. The locations with the highest friction and the largest respondent populations came first.
- Laptops. One model in Fexco’s laptop estate was generating a disproportionate number of issues. The record identified it. The data went directly to the OEM, who ran their own analysis, identified the cause, and recommended a specification change. The swap happened within the existing three-year replacement cycle — no additional capital expenditure, fewer support tickets.
- Meeting rooms. Meeting room friction showed up consistently across locations. The data was shared with Fexco’s AV supplier, who surveyed the rooms and returned two configurations — one per room type — for Fexco to select from.
At Iveragh Road — the building used by Fexco’s senior executive team — the record pointed to a specific problem. Brendan Buckley, Head of IT, went to find out what it was. He asked the CEO’s assistant what was actually happening in the room. The answer was straightforward: new AV equipment had been installed, but the old equipment had not been removed. The executive administrators were encountering two sets of connections, unlabeled, with no indication of which was live. The confusion was consistent and routine.
Removing the old hardware and labeling the new cables resolved it. The fix cost almost nothing. It required knowing exactly where to look — and asking the right person.
“Just quite simply, we would not have had that insight. It would not have appeared in any of our support data, any of our ticketing data. It just wasn’t there.”
— Brendan Buckley, Head of IT (Operations & Service Delivery)
Holding the standard
Round 2 ran across a comparable respondent population twelve months later. Overall satisfaction held — a marginal improvement on an already strong baseline, across a period in which the three investments above were either underway or recently completed.
For the IT function, the benchmarking picture was as important as the movement. Results remained above the global industry benchmark across most categories. That reference point mattered to the finance function as much as the scores themselves: not just evidence that specific problems existed, but confidence that the level of IT investment was calibrated correctly relative to the market.
“It gives me confidence that we’re investing the right amount in technology and in the right areas.”
— Anna Savage, CFO
The independent record had also acquired a formal use by this point. As part of Fexco’s biannual ISO 20000 audit process, Voxxify data was presented as evidence of the organization’s end-to-end approach to IT service delivery.
“The last audit we had, the auditor was blown away by the level of insight we have within Voxxify and said that in their closing comments. They just had zero questions, it was quite remarkable.”
— Brendan Buckley, Head of IT (Operations & Service Delivery)
What changed for the finance function
Anna Savage, CFO, had seen the IT ticket data. She had heard the informal reports from floor-level conversations. What the independent record changed was not the existence of a case for investment — it was the quality of the evidence it could rest on.
When the network infrastructure investment case came to committee, it arrived with something that previous cases had not: multiple independent sources all pointing in the same direction. The decision held.
“We can go to finance, go to our business partners and say: this is what we want to do, this is why, this is how much it’ll cost, and this is the impact we believe it’ll have. You end up having much more detailed, specific conversations — and that’s what the finance people love.”
— Karl Aherne, COO“Before we had this information, some projects could have been seen by the business as ‘just another upgrade’. Now I have the confidence that it needs to be done.”
— Anna Savage, CFO
The independent record didn’t tell Fexco’s IT function things it had never suspected. What it changed was the basis on which a high standard could be protected, investment could be justified, and decisions — once made — could be defended.
