- actiondeafness.org.uk
- Approx. 70 users
Main office in Leicester with offices in Loughborough, Derby and Brighton.
Action Deafness is a deaf-led registered charity that provides intelligent solutions for their clients, with a unique insight into the issues faced by people who are deaf, deafened and hard of hearing in their everyday lives.
With a customer-centric approach, communication is a key corner stone of the charity, which provides over 15,000 hours of support to its clients every year.
Key Outcomes
- Infrastructure extended over two sites
- Migration of existing email exchange to Microsoft 365
- Increased productivity and operational efficiencies
- Secure remote working capabilities
- Non-profit organisation discount on Microsoft licenses
The Challenge
Action Deafness was expanding its operations to an additional office space, and so required an extensive IT and Communications infrastructure to be extended across both the existing and new sites.
In addition to this, the charity wanted to migrate their existing Exchange server to an improved and more secure cloud-based server. With a large percentage of staff working remotely, the team required easy access to shared documents and robust security measures.
Air IT successfully managed the extension of our IT infrastructure in an efficient and professional manner. There was minimal disruption to the team throughout, and the process of upgrading to Office 365 was smooth and well-handled. We now work with Air IT as our remote service desk – the staff continue to be helpful and polite, and we are very happy with the service we receive.
Jim Robertson
Finance Manager, Action Deafness
The Air IT Approach
Work took place out of office hours to ensure there was minimal disruption to the Action Deafness staff, with support from an engineer who remained on-site during working hours to ensure that systems were fully operational and any issues were dealt with promptly.
As a Microsoft Gold partner, Air IT was able to work with Action Deafness to secure a significant discount on their Office 365 package as a not-for-profit organisation, which allowed the charity to make savings on their overall project costs. As part of the Office 365 install, Bitlocker was also deployed across systems to increase data security.
Air IT installed unified threat management (Sophos), Firewall (VPN), and intrusion detection and prevention capabilities across a single platform, simplifying the entire security package.
The Outcome
Migration to the new site was a success. The introduction of the cloud-based Office 365 platform offered Action Deafness increased security and accessibility, and the team now benefit from increased productivity when working off-site or at home.
Thanks to the Bitlocker device encryption service, the team’s devices and their contents can only be accessed by authorised users. The installation of VPN adds further protection, by providing encrypted access to the internet for those working outside of the office environment. The organisation now has peace of mind that any sensitive client and company data is safe and secure, both in and out of the office, as well as ensuring legal compliance with recent data regulation.
Special Projects
Following the migration, Action Deafness required full hardware upgrades across 10 workstations to replace outdated equipment. Each of the replacement computers and desk phones were preconfigured in the Air IT workshop before being installed in the Action Deafness offices, significantly reducing potential downtime during the set-up process by making sure everything was ready to go.
Many of Action Deafness’ employees are members of the organisation themselves, as members of the deaf, deafened and hard of hearing community. Air IT continues to offer service desk support to staff in a variety of ways, ensuring end users are able to communicate with the Air IT Service Desk technicians via phone call and email. The Air IT Service Hub is easily accessible and allows Action Deafness employees to manage their account and track service tickets on any device, at any time.
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