SCC has been a partner of the Canal & River since 2009, helping to deliver the managed IT services contract. In summary, we provide:
ITIL aligned service management for the user base of 1900 users.
Service Desk, circa 10,800 incidents and 2600 Service Requests.
End User Compute and Mobile device support.
Application hosting, infrastructure Management and Monitoring.
Security services.
Software Asset Management of key software products, e.g.Microsoft.
The Trust enlisted SCC to help solve their goal to modernisethe infrastructure, save money and derive full value from their Microsoft Enterprise agreement. Through a collaborative approach SCC and the Trust designed a modernisation programme coupled with a contract extension which based our charges on a more flexible model.
Through a jointly agreed programme SCC worked in partnership with the Trust to migrate infrastructure services to Office365 and modernise the core infrastructure, connectivity and EUC administrative functions whilst the Trust focused on working with business stakeholders to migrate off file shares into SharePoint to Office365, at the same time improving data governance and retention.
A number of legacy systems were removed and SCC’s service was moved to the latest shared services and private cloud infrastructure components. The work achieved a reduction of around 15% in hosting charges through a combination of streamlining the service and eliminating duplicated cost from the Microsoft Enterprise agreement and other systems previously incurring additional cost for similar services.
Another benefit of the shared service approach was at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic the Trust moved staff to home working. SCC rapidly provisioned additional remote access capability for connectivity, VPN and associated services such as external firewall access.
The changes were completed quickly, within three days, which could be achieved so quickly through use of our shared services. The increased capacity ensured that Trust staff working at home were able to continue working without impact and a good user experience.
Our long-standing partnership has also allowed us to fully understand the Trust as a business. During the periods of lockdown the Trust had to close sites leading to challenges in handling post. SCC worked with the Trust to introduce a digital hybrid mail solution. This allows inbound post to be scanned and sent digitally to Trust staff, and external post is sent to SCC’s central print facility for posting. The new solution has continued long-term as it has increased efficiency and reduced cost.
The Trust continues to grow its charitable activities such as volunteering. To support this SCC have adopted a stretch of the Grand Union Canal in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, in 2019, with employees taking part in regular voluntary clean-ups as part of its Adoption Agreement with the Trust.
To date, SCC has donated 350 days of support.
SCC recognise that the continued close partnership and collaboration with the Trust is critical in achieving their defined strategic priorities. Going forward the momentum of shared goals, modernisation and cost reduction built over the last 13 years will facilitate new initiatives that support the Trust to raise money and reduce cost.
SCC has recently established a successful strategic partnership with the Central Government Agency, helping to deliver the Networks and Infrastructure Capability Programme, providing a innovative embedded function, delivering a range of business and technical outcomes via our technical team of skilled and security cleared personnel. The SCC partnership is enabling the Central Government Agency to scale their network with higher levels of simplicity and automation.
As part of this engagement, SCC successfully tendered to provide enterprise-wide network consultancy services to the Central Government Agency over the next three to five years. The SCC delivery team has a well-defined structure, led by Strategic Consulting, who engage with the Central Government Agency at a business level, to help define the outcomes and create statements of work that both parties sign up to.
SCC works in an ecosystem with multiple strategic suppliers in support of a wider digital transformation effort, operating as an embedded partner under a “One Team Ethos”. This also requires engaging with multiple stakeholders across various operational functions and programmes in the Central Government Agency.
Operating as a technology agnostic specialist and technical delivery partner, SCC are working with the Central Government Agency to co-develop and implement their roadmap for an enterprise scale, Software Defined Network, unifying the disparate legacy network infrastructure into a modern integrated platform. This is underpinned by Cisco technology at the core with a wider ‘multi-vendor’ network and security ecosystem towards the edge and across their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Allied to SCC's specialist skills in software defined networking, the Central Government Agency improved their ‘time to value’ by 50% compared with previous deployments of similar technology.
The wider engagement will be deemed a success if SCC helps the Central Government Agency execute each deliverable against their strategic roadmap within the stated timelines. This includes demonstrating value for money and transferring knowledge and skills to Civil Servants to empower higher levels of self-sufficiency and streamlined.