Nordoff & Robbins is the largest independent music therapy charity in the UK, dedicated to changing the lives of vulnerable and isolated people. They support thousands of people through their own music therapy centres and by working in partnership with a wide range of organisations, including care homes, schools and hospitals.
When the member responsible for IT decided to move on from Nordoff & Robbins, the charity took the opportunity to re-evaluate and consider the best practice for IT support and improvement. Nordoff & Robbins already had many different projects in plan, in addition to the ongoing management of their IT support. The charity was planning a move to cloud-based solutions, with Microsoft Office365 and SharePoint, as well as simultaneously dealing with an office move.
A full Tender process to identify attractive supply alternatives was conducted, with the outcome being a decision to outsource to the Gallery Partnership.
“If we hadn’t outsourced, finding a suitable candidate for an in-house role and training them up on our heavily be-spoked systems within the time available presented significant risks. Plus, we would still have required external cover for periods of absence.” Explains Director of Finance and Resources, Chris Dew.
“I had worked with Gallery before at a previous charity, on both website development and IT support and so included them in the tender process with 2 other agencies. All prospective firms were invited to present to groups of colleagues from which our collective assessment was gathered. The fact that Gallery already supports many charities, their straightforward approach when presenting to colleagues and their cultural fit with our values and ways of working were significant factors in choosing them.”
Nordoff Robbins chose Gallery’s configuration of Microsoft SharePoint – “Charity ShareCentre” for it’s new project of moving to the cloud, because they were the only provider who had invested in a customisable system template – making the benefits apparent to all the assessors.
“We found Gallery’s commitment to our needs very attractive,” Chris explains.
“The substance of the offer was clearly demonstrated; this wasn’t just sales talk”. It was particularly helpful to see SharePoint in action and ready to deploy, with a clear demonstration of the potential of a shared knowledge base. Gallery worked with us to design a ShareCentre built around our needs and the post-implementation support has been superb.
“We’re now able to take full advantage of collaborative working in the cloud. Colleagues love the flexibility of being able to access shared content from anywhere.”Getting organised has resulted in big improvements.” Chris remarks.
“For example, the speed of ticket resolution dramatically increased, thanks to Gallery’s responsiveness. There isn’t a subject area that they don’t know about, so there is much more confidence now that all helpdesk issues will be resolved swiftly. We are now able to lift up from the day-to-day and focus on the longer-term strategic IT issues.”
“The fact that Gallery already supports many charities, their straightforward approach when presenting to colleagues and their cultural fit with our values and ways of working were significant factors in choosing them.”
Gallery Partnership
Unit V111, Vox Studios
1-45 Durham St
London, SE11 5JH
