Consultants appointed for District Council's Microsoft 365 project

Stratford-on-Avon District Council recognised some time ago that it needed to transform its operations to become more efficient and cost-effective as an organisation.

Nviron have now been appointed as Consultants for the next phase of the transformation journey and will be working closely with the Council's IT team, delivering the technical elements of the Microsoft Office 365 delivery programme.

Cllr Mark Cargill, Transformation and Digital Portfolio at Stratford District Council says: "This is an important next step in our ambitious journey to deliver modern working procedures allowing our staff to become more efficient and better placed to react to changing situations. The recent Coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated just what we can achieve with an average of more than 200 staff working daily from home. With the new building blocks in place we can provide more tools for our staff allowing us to become a more agile council.

"Residents expect the Council to be the most efficient they can, especially given the current strains on our finances following the pandemic. This transformation will help us to move in that direction.  I am very much looking forward to working with Nviron to achieve our goal."

"Nviron are delighted to have been selected to work with Stratford District Council on this project and very much look forward to a productive collaboration," commented Andy Carty, Nviron's Head of Public Sector.

The main aims of the project include:

• Reduce costs: Save costs through efficiencies and use these savings to invest in other services. Buying services from Microsoft will also reduce costs of procuring and maintaining different systems.
  
  
• Investment: Investing to save in the long term. Remain competitive and attract and retain high calibre staff and Councillors.
  
  
• Replace old systems and technology: Introducing improved telephony systems will reduce the number of desktop office based phones. Remove dependence associated with supporting and maintaining different systems.
  
  
• Reduce risk: Cloud based data backed up automatically to ensure business continuity.
  
  
• Enhance productivity: Take advantage of new technology and collaborate?more across the Council, using modern ways of working, from anywhere, at any time, on any authorised device. Free up staff time to deal with more complex customer needs and to provide a better service to customers. Allow field workers to use their time more effectively, instead of travelling to and from the office.