By applying its deep skills in Microsoft SharePoint and .Net technology, Kainos has taken the strain off the charity’s internal IT team.
Background
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a major UK charity which works tirelessly to protect children from cruelty, deliver child protection consultancy and training, campaign for changes to the law, and raise awareness about child abuse. To achieve its objectives, the Society needs to make efficient use of its resources and ensure that its operations are reliable, flexible and aligned to support the business. This is particularly true in the current economic environment, where there is a need to extend the reach for funding from supporters and make the best use of those funds.
Challenge
To ensure that the NSPCC runs at optimum efficiency, the Society depends on the reliable automation of key business processes. It runs a range of IT applications to support its business, including systems that track the details and progress of individual case referrals, and those that support fundraising through direct and online channels.
Even following recent restructuring, the charity has 3,000 employees, most of whom rely on the timely access to accurate information to do their jobs effectively. On top of this, it engages with some 3,500 volunteers, who need access to online resources to drive their fundraising activities.
The NSPCC is served by an internal IT team of 34 people, who have their work cut out because of the conflicting demands on their time. Traditionally, this has meant a strong reliance on external resources for consultancy and software development work, and more recently for third-party support services.
Solution
The NSPCC first engaged specialist systems integrator Kainos in 2009 through a competitive tender process, marking the start of a relationship that has seen the company work on a series of critical consulting and development projects for the charity. Initially Kainos provided consultancy to the NSPCC on its choice of the core call-centre technology during a major upgrade to its acclaimed ChildLine service, while in parallel developing a new web site for the Society to support the Government’s National Safeguarding Unit (NSU).
Over time, the NSPCC has also come to rely heavily on Kainos Causeway, the support business of Kainos, in recognition that its internal IT department was overstretched. This was having a detrimental impact on the quality of service provided to business users and volunteers. When a couple of internal technicians left and were not replaced, external volunteers found themselves unable to register or gain access to web-based resources because of errors on pages.
As Colin Cherry, the Society’s senior IS business partner, explains, “There were issues that had remained outstanding for a year or more, which was affecting the business’s perception of the IT department.”
Having witnessed first-hand Kainos’s deep technical expertise, especially around modern Microsoft environments including .Net and Microsoft Office SharePoint System (MOSS) on which many of the NSPCC’s IT systems are now based, the Society had no hesitation in entrusting the support for its core systems to the company.
“Initially, we approached the Kainos Causeway team to support the NSU web site as Kainos had built the system, but I’ve since moved a further three support contracts over to them,” Colin says.
Today, Kainos Causeway proactively supports the NSPCC’s overarching SharePoint environment, the various web sites that have been built on top of this, its Donations application which is based on an older Microsoft .Net platform, and a series of legacy applications.
Benefits
While it was the company’s competitive pricing and deep skills base which first attracted the NSPCC to Kainos, the Society has also been greatly impressed by the company’s approach to projects. Being based in Belfast, Kainos’s cost model is very attractive as a lot of work can be carried out remotely. “Any development work to undertake enhancements is completed via the support team who are already familiar with the applications. This maximises efficiency and when combined with the competitive rates gives a very commercially compelling model,” Colin notes.
“The people at Kainos are very professional, very pragmatic in their approach and have excellent skills in all the areas we need, which means they can fix problems very promptly,” he adds. “Their experience of even the more niche technologies we use is second to none.”
The real value, though, is in the business’s perception of the IT service, he notes. “Before, users felt that problems they reported went into a black hole and were never addressed. Now, they’re fixed within 48 hours, which has resulted in a very positive response from the business. The quality of our service has gone up significantly since engaging Kainos.”
