Queen Elizabeth Foundation 
The Queen Elizabeth's Foundation is a charity based in the south east of England that enables and supports disabled people to increase independence and improve life skills.
What was their situation?
A change at the top can often be the stimulus for a fresh start – and that was what happened with the Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation (QEF) when the organisation’s in-house IT Manager announced his intention to retire. Rather than simply bring in a replacement, the charity’s Trustees decided to use the opportunity to test the market, inviting Connect and a number of IT outsource companies to bid for the work. Over the years, QEF had developed considerably and the demands on the IT system had expanded rapidly. With more than 300 staff working across five different sites in Surrey and Kent, QEF knew that they would need a company that had the capacity to manage a complex organisation with many staff who were not hugely experienced in the use of IT.
How has Connect helped?
After a detailed and thorough review, the QEF decided to outsource all of its IT support to Connect which was to be provided by a mixture of an on-call helpdesk and on-site engineers. As part of the deal, the remaining QEF IT engineers from the in-house team were transferred to Connect. Right from the start, the new Connect team was determined to improve the performance of the charity’s IT system but at the lowest possible cost. As a first step, the most modern parts of QEF’s 12 servers were amalgamated to construct four faster servers. The set up and software on every PC was then standardised. Finally, an IT blueprint for the following 12 months was produced identifying the PCs and servers that would need to be upgraded or replaced, as well as the most cost effective way of funding these changes. The engineers transferred from QEF have also benefited from moving to Connect; because they now work for other clients, they have gained new IT skills and have opportunities for promotion that would not have been available at QEF.
