See how we have helped some of our clients

Impellam Group plc | Managed Services & Specialist Staffing

THE CLIENT

Impellam is the second largest staffing company in the UK and the sixth largest managed service provider worldwide.  Clients across the world look to Impellam for Managed Services and Specialist Staffing in the UK, North America, Australasia, the Middle East and Europe.  Working with them are 3,200 Impellam people, bringing a wealth of expertise through their 18 market-leading brands across 168 location.  Brands include Blue Arrow, Carbon60 Celsian Education, Tate, SRG, SCom, Guidant Group, Lorien, Carlisle Support Services, Medacs Global, Commensura, Chadwick Nott, Career Teachers.

THE CHALLENGE

To improve systems availability, communications and move towards cloud-based solutions and messaging to improve touch-points for mobile workers, clients, and candidates.  Systems required streamlining, branch offices required improved Wide Area Network Communications to access cloud-based core business applications and applications needed to be managed and migrated to new platforms.  A complete Technology Refresh was required to include hardware, Microsoft Operating Systems (OS), Core Applications and Communications Network Infrastructure.

THE SOLUTION

Nu Chapter Solutions were selected by Impellam to assist with a number of IT initiatives to enable them to meet their goals.  In respect to Business as Usual (BAU), We provided coaching and management of internal IT Support personnel to provide improved understanding of Customer Service in line with ITIL standards, and complemented their own in-house engineering team by providing our own people to work alongside them providing support to their nationwide offices and manage moves and changes.

In line with their future short- and long-term strategic direction, we completed a Technology Refresh Project rolling out 800 systems to circa 200 branch office locations and performed upgrades to Microsoft Operating System Software, Applications & initially Citrix deployment.

We managed the roll-out and implementation of a new Wide Area Network (WAN), co-ordinating visits to 200+ branch office locations and client sites where Impellam Managed Service personnel resided, to install new communications circuits and core infrastructure equipment managing vendors like BT and SAS.  At the same time, we were responsible for tidying-up the branch office internal infrastructure to include desk cable management, communications cabinet patching and correct housing of core network equipment appliances to include data switches, patch cabling and routers.

To improve the ability for mobile workers to communicate with core business systems we installed Aruba WiFi Access Points into each Branch Office so that workers could utilise tablets, laptops and mobile phones to access applications and data.

Gustav Kaser | Training Consultants

THE CLIENT

Gustav Kaser are an International Management Training Company.  They serve their global range of clients from offices located in or near to the main business centres of Europe, Asia and the Americas.

They cooperate worldwide with people in their local markets and have a proven ability to design and deliver international transition & change programmes for companies operating worldwide.

They have a specialist team of 100+ senior training consultants and support staff operating remotely worldwide.

THE CHALLENGE

Gustav Kaser training consultants spend most of their time at client premises providing training to staff and managing change in the environment.  The consultants were utilising laptops with Microsoft Operating Systems and applications and ACT CRM system for managing client information.  Access to email was via POP3 accounts and each had their own ACT database that was intended to synchronise to a main ACT server database but quite often failed to synchronise.  The IT Infrastructure required a complete overhaul to cater for the growing professional needs of the consultants and clients.  Consultants required access to key applications and data from their Laptops, Mobiles and Tablet devices wherever they were worldwide.

THE SOLUTION

Nu Chapter Solutions were engaged by Gustav Kaser in 2010 to review the current systems and infrastructure and propose a solution that was future proof for a 3 to 5-year period.  We designed and implemented a new Microsoft Hosted Server Infrastructure which provided core applications and data inclusive of an accounting system and ACT Customer Relations Management Database configured such that consultants could utilise their data when remote and scheduled to synchronise daily with the main database.  Microsoft Sharepoint was utilised to provide managed document storage accessible via secure web portals.  All consultants were provided with new laptop systems all configured to a standard build which ensured regular updates to operating systems and applications were applied. This initial solution catered for the consultants needs until a full business & systems review in 2017, supported by us.

In Q4 of 2017 following a review of their business and systems, we concluded that Microsoft Cloud Services had matured enough to be considered for Gustav Kaser so we prepared a programme of change which was accepted and work commenced in Q2 2018.

We successfully migrated Microsoft Exchange email, applications, company data to Microsoft Business 365 with Azure.  We migrated the data from the ACT customer relation database to SalesForce and provided integration with Microsoft Office365. All of the consultant’s laptops were renewed and configured with Microsoft Office365.Gustav Käser initially engaged Nu Chapter Solutions to design, build and support a core server infrastructure providing Microsoft Applications, file, email and ACT Customer Relations Database to cater for their remote working Training Consultants.  We supported and managed this platform for 7 years.

More recently, Nu Chapter Solutions successfully moved Gustav Käser’s Exchange and File Servers to Microsoft Business 365 services, a comprehensive set of business productivity and collaboration tools, and provided integration to Sales Force CRM system all of which reside in the Cloud.

Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation | Not for Profit Organisation

THE CLIENT

Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation is the world’s first Garden City, created as a solution to the squalor and poverty of urban life in Britain.

They provide a range of activities and services that are diverse, as are the groups and organisations that they support.  At the heart of their operations sit their charitable commitments.

They own two Managed Services buildings providing managed office and support facilities for small to medium businesses in Letchworth as well as a cinema, library and tourist information centre.

THE CHALLENGE

Letchworth Garden City Foundation were experiencing numerous issues with their IT Infrastructure and IT support function. The network infrastructure was unreliable and difficult to cater for moves and changes and on-boarding of new clients.  There was no documentation on the current server builds (all virtual servers) and/or the network infrastructure to include firewalls, routers and switches and no documented process and procedures for support or change control.

Drastic improvements were required to improve the IT environment and support as a whole.

THE SOLUTION

Nu Chapter Solutions were selected initially by Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation to analyse the IT Support function and Infrastructure and provide detailed reports on findings with actions.

As a result of our initial analysis report and recommendations, we were engaged to provide hands-on management support and IT support resources to act as a catalyst and manage change in the IT Support team and the methods and approach to support of the infrastructure and end-user environment.

We identified the risks within the environment and the IT support function inclusive of single points of failure, documented the infrastructure, prepared process and procedure documentation and provided familiarisation and spread the knowledge of the environment and support to all IT support individuals.  Where appropriate we de-skilled certain processes to ensure that second- and third-line support personnel could focus on changes required to the infrastructure to meet growing and changing business demands and leave business as usual support to the first line support personnel where possible.

We familiarised our support engineers with the entire infrastructure inclusive of firewall, switch VLAN and system configurations as well as the cabling infrastructure within the managed services buildings and where possible removed all single points of failure.

We took the responsibility for the on-boarding of new clients to the managed service buildings and all moves and changes.

Nu Chapter improved the customer satisfaction levels, minimised risk within the environment and put in place the foundations for Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation to move forward and meet strategic business goals.

Gloucester City Homes (GCH) | Housing Association

THE CLIENT

GCH is an independent registered housing association which owns and manages 4,450 rented homes, 270 leasehold properties, 60 shared ownership properties, 30 commercial units and 52 homeless units.

They have a number of Sheltered Living and Independent Living Locations around Gloucestershire taking care of the homeless and elderly.

THE CHALLENGE

The Sheltered and Independent Living locations are managed by local Scheme Managers who required access to GCH central systems and core business applications in order to carry out their duties and care for the people and premises under their control.  The experience of GCH staff using the networking facilities in place was not good mainly due to intermittent problems which seemed to take an elongated time to resolve but which were never entirely fixed.

The challenge was to design and implement a secure and effective network infrastructure via which the GCH staff could securely connect to central systems, applications and data.  This network Infrastructure and the systems attached had to be easily managed remotely by IT and network support personnel at HQ.

THE SOLUTION

Nu Chapter Solutions were engaged by GCH to understand the inherent issues and then propose a cost-effective solution that could be managed internally by GCH technical staff.

We had to work with the incumbent provider of the Wide Area Network Connectivity and the core server platform providing applications and data, the CCTV Surveillance company and the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoiP) provider to understand the requirements and method of delivery of services.  We then designed a local area network (LAN) incorporating Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) to cater for the segregation of corporate data and applications, VoiP, CCTV, WiFi access and tenant type Internet Services via a kiosk type locked-down system.  This was accepted and we implemented the solution at the same time installing structured cabling into each location.

The design and implementation were all fully documented inclusive of the method of remote management and support.

The new Infrastructure is very much more reliable, easy to detect root cause problems as and when they may occur, manageable, and provides for much improved secure access to corporate systems, applications and data and therefore making both the GCH remote workers and support staff much more efficient at performing their roles.