The Background
For more than 50 years, Accrington & Rossendale College has been providing award-winning education and training to the students of Hyndburn, Rossendale, the Ribble Valley and beyond.
In addition to a diverse curriculum of further education, Accrington & Rossendale College boasts a highly respected university education programme.
The Challenge
Prior to working with Daisy, Accrington & Rossendale College had a large mobile contract on the Orange network with another telecommunications provider.
The contract only offered the college a shared business plan, meaning that call and data allocation was not evenly distributed across all users. As a result, staff were unaware of their minute and data allocation, allowing some people to use considerably more of the call allocation than others.
The college sought a new and better deal which would provide an online portal as well as a billing platform.
The college had also found that it was unnecessarily overspending on its telecoms because it did not need as many handsets as the previous supplier was providing.
The Solution
Accrington & Rossendale College selected Daisy as a result of how competitively priced the provider would be over a two-year contract. The value of the bundles were viewed as being particularly good, providing the college with a high level of data and call usage. Daisy was also in a position to offer 4G, an attractive feature which at the time was widely unavailable amongst other telecoms providers.
Daisy deployed a selection of 48 mobiles to Accrington & Rossendale College, a reduction of almost half of what it received from its previous provider. The deployment included standard Nokia devices in addition to the latest iPhone handsets.
Richard Kelly, IT Operations Director at Accrington & Rossendale College, said: “We really liked the technology Daisy could offer us and the Vodafone network has proved to be very effective. The level of service delivery was very quick and our mobiles arrived with the SIM cards already inserted and username details included. This made it much easier for us and meant that we could use the mobiles almost straightaway.”
Richard added: “We do like buying locally wherever possible and the location of our mobile account manager is ideal should we encounter any issues.”
The Result
As a result of reducing the number of mobile phones and Daisy offering a competitively priced package, Accrington & Rossendale College has noticed a cost reduction of 42% on previous bills. In addition to this, the college has benefited from the added ability to receive warnings when people are reaching their data and call limits, rather than do it retrospectively which can result in incurring large, unexpected bills.
Richard said: “We use our mobiles extensively across the college, from sending text messages for matters of student support, providing our on-call IT and facilities staff with a means of communication and having a supply on hand for school trips. It is therefore essential that the mobiles are as cost-effective, reliable and user friendly as possible. We are pleased to report that we have had no problems since the deployment and that the new devices have been welcomed by all users.
“The cost reductions have been a real highlight as we are now able to reinvest this money into supplying vital learning resources for our students.”
Accrington & Rossendale College now regards Daisy as a major strategic partner who they are happy to work with in the future.
