Read Our Case Study for Consultus Care in Kent..
September 2021
This is a Case Study detailing a major technology refresh we completed for our customer in Tonbridge, Kent.
INTRODUCTION
Consultus Care & Nursing agency is a long-established, family-run, provider of live-in carers and nurses offering 24-hour, personalised, private live-in care and live-in nursing in your own home. They are highly regarded and we are delighted to be working a with such a prestigious organisation.
Consultus cover a wide variety of locations across the UK, meaning that wherever you are, they can provide care for you.
The company was established in 1962. They have 2 offices in London Road in Tonbridge and 3 further premises in Dry Hill Park Road in Tonbridge.
They have around 90 staff excluding their carers and nurses.
THE CHALLENGE
Consultus had been using 2 ageing AVAYA IP Office phone systems on ISDN and the maintainer was no longer providing a good level of service and account management due to acquisitions and mergers.
Over time, they had become less satisfied with that supplier as they had recently merged with another company and then sold their group to a private equity company.
The two Reception staff deal with up to 500 inbound calls a day – the company have around 90 desk positions across their 4 separate buildings in Tonbridge, Kent.
The IT side also needed refreshing as on premises servers were being used and the general set up needed a wholesale re-think and was difficult, time consuming and costly to manage.
They also needed a up-to-date routers and firewalls and better Wi-Fi service as well as various improvements to their email systems, how and where they store, access and back up documents and various other IT aspects also needed attention.
Nick Brandon approached Consultus to see if they would like to transform all telecoms and IT aspects to better, more efficient and low maintenance technology. Nick was known to Consultus previously.
THE SOLUTION
First, tecwork installed a new hosted Gamma Horizon phone system and took over all phone services and internet connections, making improvements where necessary, retaining all numbers.
All users were on one phone system, regardless of location.
Reception staff were provided with PC based Reception consoles ensuring efficiency of call handling. Cloud based call queuing was also set up to cater for busy periods with multiple inbound calls.
Furthermore, users were able to use phones at home as well as pc based soft phones – this proved to be incredibly useful during the pandemic.
Mobile SIMS were provided to certain staff for smart phones as well as unlimited data SIMS for tablets.
Certain phone numbers have been set up on intelligent inbound telecoms solutions enabling calls to be answered by different out of hours staff with termination numbers changed on the fly via a web portal.
A wholesale IT transformation was completed.
All premises-based servers were made redundant by moving data into Microsoft’s cloud using Microsoft 365, Azure, Active Directory and Sharepoint. This allowed staff to securely access, retrieve and store documents from any device and location with Multi Factor Authentication set up for extra security.
The customer’s bespoke database application was fully tested in Azure before being migrated.
The Computer Network was rationalised and all users migrated to Microsoft 365 licensing with Bitdefender Endpoint Protection and Acronis back up. Some staff were also provided with new laptops.
tecwork managed all aspects with the help of Consultus management and team members and are providing Helpdesk Support using the customer’s new Freshdesk ticketing system which was implemented as part of the project.
This was all done seamlessly with minimal disruption.
THE RESULT
This was a complete technology transformation meaning that users have ultimate agility and efficiency.
Post installation, tecwork are providing more comprehensive support than Consultus had experienced previously whilst the new, more powerful and flexible IT infrastructure requires less maintenance.
The Management Team at tecwork – Adam Walder and Nick Brandon – ensuring customers receive WOW FACTOR Support….
All services are provided on a single monthly bill which means it is all much easier to manage, as opposed to previously were the were multiple suppliers involved.
Head of Strategic Projects, IT and Systems, Matt Seldon commented:
“Consultus Care & Nursing are leaders within the care sector, we set the bar for others to follow. Therefore, it was crucial to us that we work with partners of a similar pedigree and ultra-high standards. tecwork immediately impressed with their knowledge, responsiveness, experience and professionalism.
Their help and advice has been nothing short of fantastic and we are delighted with our new IT and systems infrastructure, enabling us to continue to provide the highest levels of service in a demanding environment “.
