About the client
Bowls Scotland are the national governing body of the sport of lawn bowls in Scotland. Their goal is to continue to provide access to a sport that over 56,000 people across Scotland love whilst working to innovate and develop it so that more people can discover it and get involved.
From the hundreds of local bowling clubs across the country to their high-performance squad competing at the Commonwealth Games, their vision has always been the same: to foster and deliver a sport which is active, modern and accessible to all.
The Challenge
Bowls Scotland have traditionally used an in-house IT function to manage their infrastructure. However, as their infrastructure aged, they decided to take the same approach to their IT as they were having with their own organisation and modernise. They decided the best way to do this was to outsource to a managed IT services partner.
Bowls Scotland were using a small business server 2011 which was quickly approaching end of life, they had to find a solution that would give them the services they needed and were used to with SBS but also modernise their IT infrastructure in order to stay ahead of the curve with technology and find reliable solutions that would allow their employees to quickly, efficiently and securely collaborate with each other.
How We Helped
Certum were chosen due to our talented technical team, proven through our multiple Microsoft Gold Partner accreditations, DELL Gold partnership, references and the fact we were the only provider to demonstrate an ISO 27001 security certification. We quickly implemented their Flexible Managed IT Support Service, ensuring that Bowls Scotland had access to our Glasgow based team, comprising of a Service Desk with monitoring, reporting, Microsoft qualified Systems Administrators, project services, procurement services, and an experienced technical account manager.
With the impending end of SBS 2011 we advised moving to Office 365 for email, collaboration and enhanced security. The in-house server infrastructure was migrated to a hyper V environment giving them more flexibility, more efficiency and making disaster recovery a breeze by implementing our Veeam Cloud Backup and Replication service.
“Certum have provided our IT support for the past year. Over the course of the last year we have upgraded our IT kit to enable us to provide an improved service to our clubs and members and installed a new IT system to manage club membership. This means that it is essential that our IT infrastructure is working efficiently and that if there are any issues, the support is in place to be able to rectify these quickly and efficiently. The team are always on the ball providing a quick and efficient service and nothing is ever too much trouble. I can honestly say that my experience of working with Certum is very a positive one.”
Gillian Boyce – Welfare, Equality & Support Admin Officer
The Results
Certum’s Managed IT Support Service resulted in a seamless transition from traditional in-house IT to a managed service. Due to our constant drive for customer satisfaction the staff at bowls noticed no difference in response and resolution times to standard day to day calls when compared to their traditional in house function, and the team’s confidence grew with access to Certum’s entire technical expertise should it be required.
This level of expertise and knowledge is incredibly difficult if not impossible to attain from an in-house employee or team that may have limited exposure to the breadth of technologies and solutions that are available and the problems that may arise from them.
Bowls had also never had pro-active monitoring of their infrastructure, and we now monitor and audit all aspects of their infrastructure. By keeping a comprehensive eye on their systems availability, health and performance we ensure Bowls Scotland remains productive and that there are no nasty surprises down the road. This new modern approach to managing the IT functions not only gave them enhanced functionality, security and expertise but also saved them money from their traditional in-house team.