eduserv impact report

Impact Report20

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Making better use of technology for public good

Eduserv is a different sort of organisation. We’re a professional IT services company entirely dedicated to public benefit.

Our assets are held in trust, and any surpluses we make are reinvested in service development and education. This report is about our impact in the sectors we serve and our plans for the future.

Philip French (Chair) and Stephen Butcher (CEO)

Contents

Education 5

Government 6

Charity 9

Healthcare 10

Values 12

Figures 14

People 16

History 18

Our impact at a glance

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Helping Leicester University save money and make better use of technology

Supporting business transformation through cloud technology for Bristol City Council

A mobile-ready website and personalised user content for the British Red Cross

Easy access to online resources for healthcare workers

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OpenAthens has enabled single sign-on access to Library e-resources and other University services. It makes things so

much easier for our staff and students.Richard Taylor, Deputy Director of Library & Learning Services, Bath Spa University

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Our OpenAthens services and Chest Agreements help almost every university and college in the UK to make their budgets go further and to improve their access to online resources. Now we’re also helping them develop their digital engagement.

So, for example, the University of Leicester:

1. Saves time and money with our software and online resource licences. We estimate the university saves at least £250,000 per year through our negotiations.

2. Uses our OpenAthens identity and access management service to help provide its 15,700 staff and students with easy access to subscribed resources whether on campus or elsewhere.

3. Is developing their digital engagement, commissioning us to migrate their website to an enterprise content management system. We’re working collaboratively with their in-house development team to ensure they are fully equipped to support, and further develop, their site to meet their needs in the future.

Education

Quick Facts:

● Over 4 million people in 33 countries use OpenAthens, our identity and access management service.

● We saved universities and colleges £46 million in licencing costs in 2014.

OpenAthens makes managing access to hundreds of resources,

for thousands of students, much more manageable. It also means that students only need one user name and password to access all online resources.Joanne Dunham, Head of Collections & Information Systems, University of Leicester

We really value the Eduserv licence negotiation service. It means we can

provide our students and researchers with industry-leading software and extra benefits like the home use rights. The licence terms make my job easier and make campus-wide use affordable.Sue Preston, Software Manager IT Services, University of Leicester

Eduserv is helping us migrate our site to new technology at the same time as we train our in-house team. This

collaborative approach makes the work great value and is helping us make better use of technology in our digital communications.Lee Knapton, Senior Project Manager University of Leicester

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Government departments and local authorities need to cut costs and improve public services. Our services help them do that by consolidating their IT infrastructure and migrating to the cloud. Over the past year, we’ve worked with a number of government organisations including departments, local authorities and agencies.

Government

Supporting Bristol City Council’s business transformation through the cloudWe’re helping Bristol to cut costs and transform their digital service through a period of managed migration from in-house data centres to the cloud.

In February 2015, after several months of careful planning, our team worked from Friday evening into the early hours of Monday to migrate Bristol’s infrastructure, addressing problems as they arose and ensuring there was no disruption to council services.

By migrating our IT estate to Eduserv’s data centres we’re able to

make significant cost savings through property rationalisation. The move also means that the IT team can focus on adding value to the way the council uses IT rather than simply managing the IT estate.Ian Gale, ICT Service Delivery & Integration Manager, Bristol City Council

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With reductions in funding and increased pressure on budgets, the challenge for charities to increase donations, improve volunteer management, and enhance services to beneficiaries has never been tougher.

We help charities get the right digital and IT strategy in place, in order to engage more effectively online and to boost performance, while cutting costs on their hosting and infrastructure.

We work hard to understand charities’ needs and to share lessons across the sector, and we were delighted to win the Charity Times ‘Technology Provider of the Year’ award in May 2015. Our charity clients include Alzheimer’s Society, the British Red Cross, Marie Curie and Drinkaware.

Enhancing the British Red Cross’ digital strategy with a mobile-ready website and personalised user contentTo help the British Red Cross get the most out of their digital communications we’ve optimised their main site for access from mobile devices, making it quick and easy for users to navigate and donate. A new GPS feature provides information based on location.

Working with the British Red Cross, we’ve helped ensure:

● the website detects and optimises for any mobile device;

● users can find services more easily;

● the mobile site drives visitors to their shops;

● fewer call-centre calls and easier content updates, meaning real efficiency savings.

Only needing to edit content once for both sites makes it efficient

to manage and ensures users get a consistent message.Margaret O’Donnell, Head of Digital, the British Red Cross

From the nearest wheelchair loan facility to mobility aids and

support at home, with just two clicks I can find all the help and support I need for my elderly mother on my mobile. I even use the site to find the British Red Cross charity shops when I’m visiting other towns.Joanne, mobile site user

Charity


Access to the right information at the right time is critical to delivering efficient and effective health services.

The NHS spends millions on subscriptions to vital information resources for their staff. Maximising the value they get from these resources is key, but ensuring easy access to hundreds of online resources for thousands of staff is a significant challenge.

The OpenAthens identity and access management service makes it easier to to provide the right users with the right access, reducing administration overheads and providing a seamless experience for users wherever they are.

Hundreds of thousands of NHS staff and clinicians rely on OpenAthens for their access to resources.

Healthcare

OpenAthens users are able to do their jobs more efficiently, freeing up precious time and

resources whether using the service for professional development, on ward rounds, or in Accident & Emergency departments.Alexia Tonnel, Director, Evidence Resources, NICE

OpenAthens worldwideThe OpenAthens identity and access management service is not just an authentication tool for the UK. It is used in 33 countries worldwide, helping students, researchers and clinicians access the information that is vital to their roles.

Users love OpenAthens because it gives them seamless, remote access

to our many resources.Pat Regenberg, Library Manager, Overlook Medical Center, Health Sciences Library, USA

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CommittedWe care about the public benefit that our customers provide and our first priority is to help them deliver better services. That’s why we exist; it’s why working at Eduserv is about more than a pay cheque. We care about our customers and about each other, and we hope that comes across in our approach.

Living our valuesIt’s commonplace now for organisations to proclaim their values: for us it’s vital that we make commonplace words real, understand what they mean for us, and keep checking how we measure up:

ProfessionalWe seek to hire and develop talented people; people who are ambitious to grow. We strive to understand our customers’ needs better, to exploit technology better, and to ensure we give ever better value for money to the organisations we serve. We aim for consistently high quality and great customer service.


CollaborativeWe aim to be supportive and straightforward in everything we do. We work alongside our customers to help them understand their costs, challenges, risks and opportunities, and develop solutions that help them achieve their business aims.

Making the most of our independenceEduserv cannot be bought or sold – unlike most medium sized technology providers. This means we can, and do, prioritise long-term relationships over short-term earnings.

It also means our customers can be sure we will still be here tomorrow, as an independent, self-sufficient enterprise, dedicated to their interests. And it means our staff have the confidence that Eduserv will continue to be their employer, allowing them to focus on developing and delivering valuable services.

By focusing on our values and continually improving, we’ll enable more organisations to make better

use of technology for public good.Stephen Butcher, CEO


Being business-like

Eduserv stands out as a charity working in a competitive and changing landscape and making

such a positive difference to the customers it works with. I really enjoy seeing the value Eduserv creates in very important areas.Tony Mather, Trustee

We have great ideals – to make a big difference to the organisations we serve, so that they can make a bigger difference to those they serve. But we can only do this if we’re effective and efficient.

Managing our resources sensibly, investing well, and contracting prudently is key to ensuring that we continue to provide exceptional services in the future.

In 2013/14 we generated a trading surplus of £257,000 and we expect to make a surplus of not less than £400,000 in 2014/2015. These surpluses contribute to a reserve for capital investment, for our planned education programme, and for pension liabilities.


Making a surplus most of the time is important for us, but it’s not enough.

Our mission is to help organisations make better use of technology for public benefit, and our ambition is to increase both the number of public good organisations we support and the value we bring them.

These organisations choose to use us rather than our commercial competitors, and the net value of our services to them provides some measure of the benefit we’re delivering to them.

In 2013/2014, this grew by 11% and, in 2014/15, we expect growth to exceed 20%.

Unlike most commercial organisations of our size, we’re happy to continue providing a diverse range of services, as long as each of those services is fulfilling our mission and is sustainable.

Our understanding of the challenges faced in the sectors we serve informs how our services develop – understanding what kind of software agreements our universities need, or what hinders their more effective use of online content; understanding how digital technologies can best help charities engage and operate; and understanding how cloud technologies can best support citizen services in an unforgiving economic climate.

As an organisation constituted to serve the public rather than shareholders, our privilege is to address these agendas with a view to maximising the value we deliver rather than the surplus we make, and our ambition is to continue increasing that value at pace.

Growing Looking Ahead

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Eduserv has grown significantly over the years and now employs over 160 staff. We seek to recruit and develop talented people who share our purpose of using IT for public good. We’re really proud of the staff we have and recognise that we couldn’t help our customers use technology more effectively without them.

Our people

TrusteesEduserv’s Trustees are all volunteers and are all senior, respected figures in their industries. Our current Trustees are:

It is amazing what 21st century IT can offer public and not-for-

profit sector organisations. However it is so often mismanaged. I joined Eduserv as a Trustee as it is a charity with a clear remit to help these organisations make IT work. It is a privilege to work with a team that does make a difference.John Tate, Trustee

Philip French, Chair

Chief Technology Officer, SSCL Transformation, Sopra Steria

Ceri CarlillIndustry Value Engineering, SAP

Jos CreeseCEO, Creese Consulting


The combination of bright, hardworking people, a strong team of executives and trustees, technical excellence and a powerful not-for-profit ethos makes chairing Eduserv’s trustee board both engrossing and invigorating.

Philip French, Chair

Graham GilbertChair, York EMC Services

Jillian MooreUK Client services Partner, Slalom Consulting

Paul GreatrixRegistrar, University of Nottingham

John Tate CEO, Tate Technology Ltd

Tony Mather Group Business Transformation Director, Musgrave

I am delighted to have the chance to contribute to Eduserv’s growing success by

bringing ideas, challenge and experience to complement the immense talent of its existing internal teams.Jos Creese, Trustee


Our history

Athens becomes OpenAthens, supporting open identity management standards.

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Athens reaches the 2 million user mark.

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Sitecore Content Management System is adopted by our web development team.

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We move from University of Bath premises to independent offices in the centre of Bath.

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Athens is adopted by the NHS

Hosting of school performance tables is followed by development of the infrastructure for UK Online, the government’s precursor to DirectGov.

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A period of growth for Chest and NISS. Online resources are added to Chest portfolio.

NISS develops expertise in web content management and hosting.

Athens is developed in response to a need for controlled access to online resources.

In 1999 Eduserv is established as a registered charity, governed by Trustees.

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The Combined Higher Education Software Team (Chest) and the National Information on Software and Services (NISS) initiatives are launched. 19

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Web hosting grows dramatically. Major clients include central government departments and national non-departmental public bodies.

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Eduserv becomes AWS Partner and launches Assured Hybrid Cloud.

Winner of ‘Tech Provider of the Year’ in the Charity Times Better Society Awards.

Over 1000 virtual machines under management.

Collaborative digital development work begins with University of Leicester.

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Our Cloud Services are awarded Pan Government Accreditation up to IL3.

Global OpenAthens partnership with EBSCO.

Eduserv Chest Agreements help save universities and colleges £46 million a year.

Bristol City Council and Brighton & Hove City Council become customers.

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Our cloud Services are awarded Pan Government Accredication up to IL2.

British Library chooses Eduserv as its Sitecore CMS provider.

Our new Adobe ELA Chest Agreement saves up to 70% for universities and colleges.

NHS extends its OpenAthens contract.

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We gain ISO27001 certification and join the G-Cloud and JANET frameworks.

Our site for Scottish Water wins Public Sector Site of the Year in the Sitecore Awards.

Eduserv is a Best Cloud Provider finalist in the 2012 UK IT Awards.

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The Microsoft Campus Chest Agreement saves UK HE/FE £1million this year and the APA agreement £2million over three years.

Our data centre expands including a 10Gb JANET PoP.

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Eduserv partners with InferMed to deliver the new NHS Direct site which goes on to win the eGovernment Awards.

A new Chest Agreement is negotiated with Sophos, the UK security software company.

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10Eduserv moves into its current home at Royal Mead, Bath and builds its new data centre in Swindon.

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Our Government Ready Platform is developed.

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www.eduserv.org.uk

Get involvedCan you help us? Whilst we don’t have a volunteering programme, we regularly recruit Trustees and are always on the look out for talented staff who are committed to IT for public good. For more information see www.eduserv.org.uk/jobs

Can we help you?If you’re serving citizens, students or beneficiaries and need some help making the best use of technology then we’d like to talk to you. You can find out more about the services we provide at www.eduserv.org.uk.

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eduserv impact report

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