The League Against Cruel Sports
“It all worked like a dream, everything that was promised has been delivered. We have no complaints at all and we are very happy, especially when compared to what we were dealing with in the past!”
Colin Sambrook - Assistant Chief Executive, The League Against Cruel Sports
Originally established in 1924, the League Against Cruel Sports is a not-for-profit campaigning organisation which is dedicated to wildlife protection. Its aim is to end cruelty to animals in the name of sport and as such, it is involved in several key campaigns. These include working towards the enforcement of the hunting act, a ban on the snaring of animals, the regulation of greyhound racing, the banning of bullfighting and an end to commercial game shooting and trophy hunting.
The League also campaigns and lobbies politicians against hunting with hounds, shooting, falconry, snaring, hare coursing, terrier work and the Grand National. In addition to these activities, it also owns areas of land across the West Country which are maintained as wildlife reserves and have been recognised for their wildlife value - and designated accordingly by English Nature or the appropriate County Wildlife Trust.
As a charity, the League has a responsibility to function as efficiently as possible, in order to maximise the benefit of the donations which it receives. Assistant Chief Executive Colin Sambrook explains further:
“We rely on donations in order to continue the work that we do, so we must ensure that the funds we receive are spent effectively and that we are operating efficiently at all times. In mid 2007 I was asked by the CEO to look at the entire organisation, to see if we could improve the way we were doing things and so make better use of our resources. It quickly became apparent that improvements could be made, the most noticeable of which was a change to our premises and in fact to our entire location.”
A major organisational change
The League Against Cruel Sports had, until that time, been based in an ageing Victorian building in South East London which the organisation owned outright. Not only was this a sizeable potential asset for the League, it also required a high level of maintenance and was in need of some fairly major renovation work. So as part of a wider change programme for the organisation, Colin recommended that they consider selling this building and moving to more practical and cost-effective rented premises outside London, as he continues:
“It was all about better working efficiencies and making the most of our available funds and assets. We made the decision in early 2008 and I started to look for suitable premises which met all of our requirements. We wanted to be near to main transport routes and also close to a town centre, so I ended up looking at more than 100 properties before we finally found somewhere which ticked most of the boxes. We’d been looking to move outside of London and the location we finally selected was in Godalming in Surrey.”
As with any relocation, there is always the potential for business disruption and staffing issues - but with a move of this magnitude, Colin knew that the possibility of losing a number of valued employees
was a high one. In central London, people could get into the office from anywhere within a given radius, but with the move to Godalming, it would be quite a challenge for some staff members to come into work on a daily basis.
A completely new approach
Having identified this potential problem, the League started to consider ways in which it could retain key staff, as part of a more wide ranging upgrade of its entire IT infrastructure. Colin explains further:
“There were two key areas to address. One was our existing outsourced IT service, which we were having serious problems with, and the other was the issue of staff retention. We’d been very unhappy with robustness of our previous IT provider and the outsourced arrangement had never really worked for us, as servers always seemed to go down. Our office manager, who was responsible for dealing with it all, was tearing her hair out!
On the telephony side, I’d looked at Voice over IP before in a previous organisation and had also used Skype, so I had an understanding of what might be possible in terms of setting up a remote working arrangement. Our existing phone system was 10 years old, and technology has moved on a lot in that time, so we decided to look at an entirely new IT and telecoms system, which would include a VoIP solution as well.”
Colin started to talk to Principal about his IT requirements in the Spring of 2008, having been contacted by the company’s marketing department. Part of this process included carrying out a complete network and security health-check and preparing a document of recommendations for review. These recommendations included moving the League’s IT systems back in house at the new premises, and then providing a fully-managed ongoing support service.
Having seen the proposals, the League Against Cruel Sports made the decision to proceed and Principal started working on the move in May 2008. At the same time, Colin also needed to look at the telephony side of the process in order to set up full remote working capability, something which was a vital part of the move. Another essential requirement was the issue of retaining the League’s existing phone numbers. The London numbers which Colin was using had been in existence for a very long time and there was a concern that losing these would adversely affect some people’s ability to contact the organisation and so, importantly, to continue to make donations. Any solution which the League considered had to include a way of transferring these numbers to the new site.
Colin spoke to his contacts at Principal and they recommended their sister company Corporate ICT, a Platinum Samsung reseller with many years experience of implementing VoIP solutions. Colin continues:
“Although the move was financially inspired it was always also personnel driven, as the ability to retain our key staff and their experience was very important to us. As such, we made a decision that anyone whose journey to work would be adversely affected, and whose job role could be carried out remotely, should be allowed to work from home and just come into the office for weekly meetings. But there was more to this than just giving them email access, we also needed them to have full telephony capability, as well as making sure that existing contacts could still reach us on our old London numbers.”
Making it all happen
The first stage was to establish a new server room at the Godalming site and then to install a full Local Area Network including all of the necessary data networking equipment. The next step was then to
migrate all of the League’s data over to the new servers and to carry out a full cutover of services in mid July at the time of the move. Principal was also responsible for setting up the 35 office-based and home-working users with all of the software programmes, email accounts, security, remote access and so on that they would need.
The other key element of the project was for Corporate ICT to install the ISDN and analogue lines which the League required, as well as the SIP trunking solution which would enable it to keep its London phone numbers. By including SIP trunks as part of the overall communications solution, Corporate ICT was able to port all of the League’s existing numbers over to the new switch, meaning that continuity was maintained. And if the League ever moves again, then the same thing can be done!
Once all of the lines were in place, Corporate then installed a Samsung OfficeServ 7200 IP platform to provide all of the office-based and remote telephony which the organisation required for its 27 staff members. This new telephony solution includes 40 IP handsets, as Colin and other key staff members have one in the office and one at home, and provides all of the required telephony functionality including call forwarding, flexible ring plans, hot-desking capability, voicemail and the like. The IP solution enables home working staff to log on to their IP handsets at home, or to a hot desking phone in the office and have access to all of their preferences, address books and so on, as well as the ability to make and receive calls using their own office DDI. Colin explains further about the benefits this brings:
“It’s all about more efficient use of resources and personnel, which enables us to work smarter. We are becoming more of a dispersed organisation and our staff now have complete flexibility to work the way they want to work. We did not want to lose key staff, and so the ability we now have to enable them to work from home is a real bonus. It’s helped us to retain the experience which our staff have and although we did lose some employees after the move, it was not as many as we had feared.
There were always going to be issues with making so many changes all at once, as well as the relocation, but it had to be done as we were at the end of our tether with the old systems. There were some teething problems on the remote working side, most notably around issues with each individual staff members’ broadband connections, but these were soon ironed out and now it all works fine.”
Ongoing relationships
Now that everything is in place and running smoothly, the League Against Cruel Sports has also set up an ongoing managed service contract with both Principal on the IT side and Corporate ICT for telephony, to deal with any issues which do arise within an agreed time frame.
This maintenance agreement includes an outsourced IT helpdesk facility as well as full management of all software licensing issues and updates. Principal have also taken on a unified purchasing role to manage the buying of all IT equipment centrally, deciding what is bought and how it is bought. This not only saves money but also ensures that the equipment which is purchased is consistent throughout the organisation, and that all potential economies of scale can be realised. Colin concludes:
“Our systems have been completely rebuilt and it all worked like a dream, everything that was promised has been delivered. I’m a great believer in the fact that it’s all about the people you deal with. Having an HR background myself, I can see the importance of this aspect of any business relationship. Our Account Manager was excellent, very accessible, and the support we have received has been first class. The engineering support and the service desk have also been really good, responding quickly to any issues that have arisen. We have no complaints at all and we are very happy, especially when compared to what we were dealing with in the past!”