Recognised as a leading specialist care provider, Mental Health Concern was growing fast. But legacy IT threatened to hold back its aspirations. However, Vohkus enabled the charity to transform its technology and achieve its goals in a fast and cost-effective way.
MHC turned to Vohkus for help. Together, they explored the charity's goals as their starting point agreeing a leading-edge digital transformation roadmap. This would provide the perfect platform for the charity to thrive, while keeping costs under control.
Charity born with a bold vision
Headquartered in Newcastle, Mental Health Concern (MHC)provides a wide range of specialist services on behalf of the NHS and local authorities. These include 24-hour adult and dementia nursing care, supported housing and community wellbeing.
The charity is part of Concern Group, which was founded by staff in a nursing home taking care of people with dementia. Their vision to improve mental health and wellbeing has delivered remarkable outcomes. Today, the organisation is now one of the largest non-statutory providers of mental health services in England.
Success leads to IT challenges
MHC's success has meant exponential growth — through winning more tenders. However, on-boarding waves of new staff easily was proving a major challenge.
The charity had a complex IT environment with ageing on-premise technology. "While the cloud seemed like a great option for our growing needs, we are a not-for-profit organisation and we faced the prospect of soaring costs," explains John Slator, Head of IT at the charity.
MHC turned to Vohkus for help. Together, they explored the charity's goals as their starting point agreeing a leading-edge digital transformation roadmap. This would provide the perfect platform for the charity to thrive, while keeping costs under control.
Email, data and core IT moved to the cloud
The two teams got to work. First, Active Directory was consolidated and cleaned, then email services moved to Exchange Online. These steps created a single identity for synchronisation and authentication.
Attention then turned to the charity's data and core IT. Data was cleansed and migrated to the Microsoft Cloud environment — with leakage prevention measures put in place and backups deployed.
Top tools maximise productivity
Vohkus also protected the new IT environment with robust cyber security from the Entperprise Mobility and Security suite. — and provided the ideal tools for a modern, agile and mobile workspace.
Users received a laptop equipped with Microsoft Office 365, Teams and SharePoint. Now, staff across MHC have the right applications, collaboration tools and documents at their fingertips, wherever they work in the UK — from the moment they join the charity.
Vohkus exclusively sourced and supplied every machine, using Windows Autopilot to pre-configure each new device whilst sharing this knowledge with the charity's IT team. The cloud-based MDM solution Microsoft Intune was also deployed to enable simpler management for mobile devices and operating systems.
The Vohkus team provided expert support and could accelerate any issues to resolution directly with Microsoft, thanks to the company's status as a Microsoft Direct Cloud Solution Provider.
Users ready to go — from Day One
