Charities increasing outsourced IT services to fix overheads and scale operations quickly
In the current economic climate, fixing overheads is a necessity whilst optimising business operations and many not-for-profit organisations are outsourcing IT services to do just that. Swanswell and Birmingham Christian Centre are two examples of charitable organisations that have outsourced their IT services to Icomm Technologies as the wave of outsourcing in this sector continues.
Swanswell is a charitable trust with more than 42 years experience of delivering successful community-based programmes and services to support people, their families, carers and affected others with problems related to drug and/or alcohol misuse.
Following a review of technology support, the organisation has completely outsourced its 24/7 IT service and support requirements to Icomm for the next three years. This has included a complete network appraisal to address business continuity – remote access, failover, efficiency and future-proofing of the IT infrastructure to match operational aspirations.
Kashmira Heer, IT Integration Manager at Swanswell, said: "The current economic climate has placed even more emphasis on working within tightly fixed budgets whilst also ensuring we are operationally sound on a day-to-day basis. This demands a proactive IT department that works with staff at every level within the organisation and with IT service and support. This approach enables the organisation to keep costs down and access the very latest expertise.
"Icomm has considerable expertise in driving businesses forward and optimising IT, so operationally we can focus on more pressing matters. As we continue to develop and grow our business with new services around the country, Icomm rapidly enabled us to scale our IT infrastructure to three new offices on very tight time lines. Fundamentally, this agility is helping us extend and improve our service delivery to our clients."
Birmingham Christian Centre's Finance Director, Paola Easton, adds: "Outsourcing unlocks new opportunities for optimising IT and reducing costs. We have fully outsourced our wireless access and business continuity with complete fail-over if our servers go down plus on-line backup to retrieve operational data.
"If we had not taken external guidance on business continuity we would not have become alive to new methodologies for protecting our business. Credible on-line backup, for example, was identified as a great mechanism to improve business continuity as well as drive down costs, saving only new data as it is created. The organisation now has a more robust platform from which to operate."
[20110830/027/DH]