BACKGROUND

What would you do with an extra £400K in the bank?

That’s exactly the question Apex Pumps found themselves asking once 1101 helped them reimagine what was possible.

The Bristol-based manufacturer of high‑performance centrifugal pumps had been experiencing a surge in demand. Production was ramping up, orders were flowing in, and the business was primed for growth.

But behind the scenes, their legacy IT setup was struggling to keep pace, creating bottlenecks, leakage points, and inefficiencies that threatened to slow momentum.

After reviewing four potential partners, Apex Pumps chose 1101 to lead a complete digital transformation.

CHALLENGE

Before we could turn up the flow, we had to address the challenges holding everything back...

• Unreliable core IT systems: Remote access, logins, and basic day‑to‑day tasks were becoming increasingly difficult, creating friction that slowed the rhythm of both factory and office teams.

• No stable, consistent IT baseline: The wider environment had evolved in a piecemeal, reactive way. Issues were being patched instead of properly engineered out, causing recurring outages and operational turbulence.

• Cyber security controls: With production volumes rising and its supply‑chain network expanding, Apex Pumps needed stronger defensive layers. Without them, the business risked vulnerabilities that could easily seep into operations.

• Reliance on a single IT individual: Having just one person managing all IT created delays, choke points, and left no capacity for proactive planning.

SOLUTION

Apex Pumps needed a partner who could modernise their systems and keep operations running with the consistent flow their customers rely on.

• Established a secure baseline: We began by assessing their entire IT environment against Microsoft best practice and Cyber Essentials. This exposed weak spots and highlighted the fastest areas for improvement.

• Built a 12-month transformation roadmap: Using the assessment findings, we created a focused roadmap to eliminate recurring IT issues, improve collaboration, stabilise remote access, and strengthen security.

• Modernised and consolidated backups: We replaced their patchwork of disconnected backup tools with one modern platform offering hourly backups and off‑site replication. This significantly reduced the risk of data loss and ensured the business had a reliable safety net when demand surged.

• Strengthened everyday security: To reinforce protection, we deployed MFA across all endpoints and introduced MDM for company devices. This created a stronger security perimeter and prevented common threats from creeping into daily operations.

• Rebuilt the server infrastructure: Their legacy servers were creating operational choke points. We redesigned the entire setup, delivering a resilient cluster with stronger performance, faster recovery, and no single points of failure.

• Ran a digital transformation workshop: With the core groundwork in place, we brought leadership and operational teams together to uncover workflow bottlenecks, highlight process gaps, and map out future technology needs with clarity and confidence.

• Transitioned to proactive support: We then shifted Apex Pumps from reactive fixes to proactive planning, acting as an embedded extension of their internal team. Every decision aligned with the roadmap and supported tangible business outcomes rather than quick technical patches.

RESULT

Without spending a single pound on new technology, Apex Pumps has already gained the operational clarity and digital capability needed to meet demand and scale at pace.

The transformation so far has come entirely from unlocking the value of tools they already owned, giving teams better visibility, smoother processes, and the ability to make smarter decisions.

This newfound capability has enabled the successful rollout of Material Requirements Planning (MRP) on key product lines, revealing a significant opportunity to reduce stock holding and free up working capital.

As Andrew Simpson, Managing Director, put it:

“We have already started to roll out the use of MRP on key items, this is looking like it could potentially reduce our stock levels by 25% (£400k).”

Looking for results like these? Contact our team and we'll arrange a discovery call.