Case Study

How Pioneering Care Partnership Moved Off Ageing Servers to Support Hybrid Working

Pioneering Care Partnership

Overview

Pioneering Care Partnership (PCP) is an award-winning charity whose mission is health, wellbeing and learning for all. Established in 1998, it creates opportunities to improve the health, wellbeing and life chances of disadvantaged communities, and engages with more than 50,000 people every year.

Group of professionals at Pioneering Care Partnership event in a meeting room.

The Challenge

PCP's staff work in a hybrid way, across community sites, at home and at the charity's centre in Newton Aycliffe. The centre is also home to community services and tenants, all of whom need reliable IT.

PCP had already moved its user accounts to Microsoft 365, but ageing on-site servers were causing constant problems: slow performance, long waits, dropouts and unreliable Wi-Fi. Those servers also ran the centre's door access control and accounts software, both of which had to keep working.

The charity also wanted better central control over its devices and user accounts.

Our move to 365 really supported the hybrid working approach the charity has implemented but our ageing server was really causing us problems due to our software running slowly. We knew that totally overhauling our current system was the best thing we could do for the charity.

Vicky Browning, Operations Manager, Pioneering Care Partnership

The Solution

Our Business Development Manager, Steven, met PCP to review its setup, and we recommended removing as much hardware from site as possible.

Servers decommissioned. The accounts system moved to a cloud-based version that staff can access from anywhere.

Secure hosting. Data and door access control now run on a small server hosted in our secure data centre, backed up every night. No replacement hardware was needed on site.

Central device management. Once PCP's data migration to SharePoint was complete, every PC and laptop was moved to an Azure domain and enrolled in monitoring and security software, so devices can be managed, updated and secured wherever staff are working.

Support for every user. All staff can reach our helpdesk from 7am to 7pm as standard, through our support portal and on any device.

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Overall, we would highly recommend Smart IT as they worked tirelessly to ensure our switch over was as smooth as possible. The onsite engineer support was great for us as it gave all our staff peace of mind.

Vicky Browning, Operations Manager, Pioneering Care Partnership

The Result

PCP now has a modern, cloud-first setup built for the way its people actually work.

Devices are monitored, updated and secured, even when staff are off site
The hosted server keeps door access and accounts running, without the burden of maintaining hardware or managing backups
Engineers were on site throughout the changeover, so teething issues were fixed immediately, and our helpdesk has supported staff from 7am to 7pm every day since
Regular account management meetings with Steven and Martin keep improving PCP's IT, covering policy, device management and disaster recovery

Having access to all our devices as well as our access points has meant we can constantly stay on top of our hardware with very little hassle compared to our previous solution. Hosting our server off site has been a real weight off our shoulders since we no longer need to worry about any maintenance or backups.

Vicky Browning, Operations Manager, Pioneering Care Partnership