Sacha Manson-Smith
Chief Technology Officer
Overview
Beryl is the UK’s leading micromobility company, championing sustainable travel options to help reduce road congestion and improve air quality and public health. We have delivered affordable bike, cargo bike and scooter schemes in UK cities and towns. We deliver schemes in partnership with cities and communities, placing people, social responsibility and environmental sustainability at the same level as financial sustainability. We also provide technology for micromobility schemes in London and Birmingham and manufacture innovative technological solutions, such as the Laserlight. Our urban cycling products have been adopted by key bike-share schemes worldwide – London, NY, and Montreal. Working in these different countries has unearthed the challenges of offering bike share as a viable mobility solution. Since then, we’ve been striving to do things differently.
Founded: Our story began in 2012 with the launch of our founder Emily Brooke’s Laserlight. We transitioned from selling bicycle lights into bike-sharing solutions in 2017.
Number of employees: We currently have around 130 employees
Target customer: As a company, we deal with a number of local authorities, both B2B and B2C.
Challenge
What challenges were you and your team experiencing prior to working with us – what prompted you to seek a solution? We were bidding for larger contracts and had internal changes in our data governance team. We needed external subject matter experts to support our ongoing data protection compliance, information security, ISMS management, and penetration testing.
As we were expanding, we found we needed an experienced pen test partner that is proficient at walking us through the outcomes and an expert source of advice. Our previous pen-testing partner provided reporting, but not so much the partnering side that we sought.
For Information security, we had some expertise in-house, but we were finding as we were developing and the number of users was growing, we had to notch it up a gear and seek expert advice.
On the data protection side, we had previously engaged a Data Protection Officer from a company who provided good advice but felt they didn’t have enough coverage to provide the support that we needed company-wide, and we knew evalian® had a larger team of expert DPOs from a variety of backgrounds to help advise us on our data protection obligations.
How did you go about searching for the solution and services? We searched on google for CISO, outsourced DPO and penetration testing, and selected 3-4 companies that could support us with those services.
Please describe the reasons you decided to work with us. Was there a tender process or a referral? We went to tender. A lot of it came down to speaking to the people involved, reviewing proposals and about who we felt would be more of a partner to us rather than transactional service and we really felt Evalian® would provide that level of partnership.
Did you have any expectations going into the process? We had an idea of what we didn’t want, such as that transactional service and we had an idea of how we wanted Evalian® to integrate with our team. It’s always difficult to measure that at the outset, you have to speak to people and that’s what it really came down to, the integrated approach that Evalian® seems to have and their overall package.
Solution
Can you describe the process we took your business through and anything you learnt about your own business through working this way? I was coordinating everything, so it was a combination of putting all your practice leads, Ray, Alex and Marcus, in touch with the relevant people within our organisation, and identifying where we thought the problem areas were.
Were there any challenges you found along the way and how did you feel we or your consultant, helped to support you through that? We had several time-sensitive areas where we required immediate support and the team at Evalian really supported us well in everything we put to them. The consultants are always on hand and we feel we have good communication which was key for these issues.
What changes did you make as a result of working with us? Across the board, it’s taken our governance and compliance to the next level of maturity.
Impact
What impact has the results from working with us had on your clients/stakeholders? We’ve now got that level of reassurance that we are able to respond to clients’ requests with full confidence and expert advice, backing up our decisions.
What do you hope to achieve in your future working relationship with us? Maintaining that quality level of compliance and governance across the company with Evalian’s support, as we continue to grow.
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