The Background
Founded in 1914, the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, serves over 728,000 people living in Suffolk plus one parish in the county of Essex, a geographical area of over 1,400 square miles.
Out of this population, almost 20,000 people from 446 parishes identify themselves with the Church of England by being members of the church electoral roll, and on average 13,000 attend Anglican Church services every Sunday. The Diocese supports the work of 88 church schools and aims to have a presence in every local community.
The Challenge
The Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was experiencing poor connectivity between its central office and satellite sites. It also had an outdated telephony system which wasn’t meeting its requirements.
As a result, the institution sought a communications system that was more efficient, and one that could accommodate workers spread across multiple sites and those working from home. This also needed to be supported by a cost-effective solution that would provide support to the Diocese’s IT team.
The Solution
Following a competitive tender process, Daisy was selected as a preferred supplier due to its cost saving ability and its link to the Parish Buying Scheme, which puts potential suppliers through a rigorous selection process to provide cost savings for its members.
After considering the Diocese’s requirements, Daisy specialists proposed a multi-faceted Mitel solution which would also offer ongoing support and maintenance services.
The solution included a Mitel MiVoice Office telephone system, which offers instant messaging and desktop integration. Broadband lines were also supplied to the Diocese’s home workers, and a dedicated leased line was installed to the Diocesan office. Following on from the project-managed installation of the new system, Daisy provided full training to ensure that the Diocese’s staff were comfortable with using it and all of its features.
The Result
The integration of remote workers’ mobile phones and stronger Ethernet/ADSL connections to the main office and remote sites have improved connectivity, maintenance and software assurance. The significantly improved connection speeds have enabled staff to use cloud-based software more effectively.Gavin Stone, the Assistant Diocesan Secretary with oversight of communication and IT operations for the St Edmundsbury & Ipswich Diocesan Board of Finance, said: “The main
Gavin Stone, the Assistant Diocesan Secretary with oversight of communication and IT operations for the St Edmundsbury & Ipswich Diocesan Board of Finance, said: “The main benefit of the solution has been the transparency regarding the costs. The prices were clearly outlined to us at the beginning of the process and the result was in line with our expectations.“
“We have been left particularly impressed by the new hardware which has contributed noticeably to business efficiency and is a vast improvement on anything we have used before.”
Having successfully implemented this wide-ranging solution, Daisy is continuing to work with the Diocese to improve its ICT efficiency.
