For the people The Edmund Trust supports, a good day starts with “a familiar face turning up with joy and love in their heart, ready to support them,” says CEO John Ellis.
The 79-year-old Cambridge charity provides supported living and community services for people with a learning disability, complex needs or autism across the East of England. Its 300+ staff rely on IT for everything from checking support plans to pulling records for a safeguarding report.
ctm has run that IT for 10 years. It gives staff fast support, plans every upgrade around a charity budget, moved the Trust off two ageing servers and into the cloud, and explains IT simply. The Trust’s team has tripled in size over that decade, and its IT now costs proportionately less.
“I'm normally reluctant to give recommendations, but I'd endorse ctm as a good business partner for any charity. They care about what we do, understand our unique challenges, and are constantly trying to help us find more efficiencies.”Jeff Palmer, Contracts Manager
Most of The Edmund Trust's staff work in the community, not in an office. They need reliable, secure IT to check rotas, review support plans and keep accurate records.
“If you’re supporting someone directly in the community, you might need to check their support plan or other details,” John says. “If your computer’s not working and it isn't fixed quickly, that can become quite a serious situation.”
Behind the frontline, a small back-office team handles the Trust’s regulatory reporting and around 40,000 transactions a year for the local authorities that commission its services.
Ten years ago, the Trust ran all of this on two physical servers in two locations, backing each other up every night. “Our infrastructure was quite costly,” says John. The Trust needed a helpdesk to sort out staff's day-to-day IT problems, and a provider who could recommend IT options to suit its needs and budget, and explain them in plain English.
“As a charity, we don't have spare money and we're not IT experts. But we're just as liable under data protection law as anyone else. We need help to get safe, reliable IT that we can check and audit.”John Ellis, CEO
John has met plenty of IT providers who didn't inspire confidence. “They typically try and blind you with complex issues and functionality, which is bewildering to a non-IT person.”
ctm took a different approach. Managing Director Rupert Davey and his team started by reviewing the Trust's existing setup.
“Rupert and the team simplify IT concepts using diagrams and plain language. They say: this is what you're doing at the moment, this is what we recommend, this is what it costs, and this is how it'll help you.”John Ellis, CEO
The first big project came when the servers needed replacing. A year ahead of the deadline, ctm told the Trust what like-for-like replacements would cost and advised moving to the cloud instead.
ctm recommended and set up the safe, reliable IT the Trust wanted. Staff now work in Microsoft's cloud, records sit in SharePoint where they're easy to audit, and multi-factor authentication protects logins.
Support workers in the community raise most of the Trust’s 100 or so helpdesk tickets a month. “We regularly get really good staff feedback about ctm,” John says.
“ctm’s day-to-day IT support is excellent, and has always been excellent. We ring them, they raise a ticket, they get on with it. They’re really helpful and supportive, and it’s very rare that the phone isn’t answered instantly.”John Ellis, CEO
Jeff Palmer, the Trust's Contracts Manager, has worked with many IT support teams. He values how ctm prioritises calls by what matters most to the Trust, not by job title.
“ctm don't prioritise by saying, 'We've got a call from a manager, let's escalate it.' They understand that problems facing our frontline support workers are often where the critical stuff is happening, and where we need a really speedy solution.”
ctm responds just as quickly when the Trust faces its most serious issues. When it investigates a safeguarding concern or prepares a report for the Care Quality Commission, the Trust sometimes needs a staff member's login or emails to see who they contacted. “ctm often get us the information we need within minutes of asking,” John says.
When John joined The Edmund Trust, it had 100 IT users. Today it has 310. ctm has helped the Trust keep costs in check by planning upgrades well ahead, phasing big costs, quoting before any chargeable work and continually looking for efficiencies. The cloud-based setup is more cost-effective and makes it easier to add new users and services.
“The Trust’s team is three times the size it was ten years ago, and our IT proportionately costs us less now than it did then. It’s doing more for less.”John Ellis, CEO
ctm knows how charity budgets work, so it flags upgrades long before they're due, whether for hardware, infrastructure or Microsoft's changing rules on charity licences.
“ctm is a great partner on a strategic level, and really proactive,” says John. “They don't tell us about a change the day before it happens. They tell us a year or 18 months ahead, when they know it’s coming. That gives us time to discuss options, budget and get approval for large costs.”
When the move to Windows 11 meant replacing laptops, ctm helped the Trust spread the cost by starting with the ones most in need. “The phased payment plan meant we could afford it.”
ctm also quotes before starting any chargeable work. “That transparency is really helpful.”
The Edmund Trust reviews its suppliers regularly to make sure it gets value for money, and each time it has stayed with ctm. “Other providers aren’t significantly better or cheaper,” John says. “And their offers often come with hidden conditions, like they’ll only work with you if you replace all your computers.”
For Jeff, ctm feel less like a supplier than part of the team. “You feel like you're working with an in-house partner that has a genuine interest in your business and cares about the relationship with you as a customer.”
“IT is important, but it shouldn't be front and centre. It needs to be in the background, working well, so everybody can do what they need to do without disruption or wasted time and effort. That’s what ctm gives us.”John Ellis, CEO
