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Case Study

Connecting Skills Australia

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One of Victoria’s most progressive nonprofits, Connecting Skills Australia devotes itself to the integration of adults with a disability into the workforce and/or community through development, training and support, throughout metropolitan and remote locations. Connecting Skills operates through a combination of federal and state funding, donations, & fundraising proceeds.

In addition, CSA manages a workforce of Supported Employees to fulfil commercial contracts to a varied range of public and private sector industries.

CSA offer a broad range of services on both an individual and group basis. Designed to assist adults to lead an independent life that is integrated into the community, CSA’s services are flexible, comprehensive and tailored to the needs of the individual.

The ProblemConnecting Skills Australia was struggling to run its complex operation on slow, ageing technology that had been inherited during its aggressive growth phase. The organization enlisted JGB, its IT partner of ten years to upgrade its infrastructure and provide a solution for their growing needs, with the aim of helping them focus less on IT and more on providing valuable services for its clients.

CSA relies on IT for day-to-day operations and service delivery as well as NDIS compliance, advocacy and fundraising efforts—but being a non profit aims to reduce extraneous expenses – in this case its IT budget.

CSA needed a cost-effective solution that would be easy to use, easy to maintain, cost-efficient to manage, and, above all, easy to deploy. It also needed to serve the 50 percent + employees who were connecting remotely, and provide easy adoption for their growing team across multiple sites.

THE CUSTOMER

From the first meeting with JGB we felt comfort in moving ahead with Gel-e. The ease of use and simple adoption of the system was just what we were looking for. More than the system though was the personal attention they paid to us and our staff. To have service providers able to give examples from our system and talk through ways to develop our systems rather than just tell us the problems was refreshing. We still have lots to do, but we can do it in our own time with the support not only of JGB but also Gel-e as we grow

Mike Anderson, CEO

CASE STUDY: CONNECTING SKILLS AUSTRALIA

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Our Partner: Established in 1985, JGB have a long and esteemed history of providing both on-premises and cloud solutions for businesses Australia wide. Based in Melbourne, JGB take a consultative approach to their work to better understand customer needs before designing and delivering cutting edge solutions. JGB has a reputation of provide industry leading IT consulting and project management, software and hardware procurement, network security, cloud applications, cloud migration services, and after sales support via their helpdesk and 24/7 managed IT services. JGB help customers to maximise return on their IT investment and minimise exposure to risk.

The experience:JGB’s expertise made it possible for CSA to deploy Office 365 quickly and without issues—allowing the organization to focus on their core competencies, rather than the new technology.

CSA enlisted JGB to deploy Microsoft Office 365, an integrated, cloud-based suite of Microsoft Office applications based on familiar Microsoft technology the staff knew and trusted. The solution consisted of Microsoft Exchange for email, and SharePoint Online for secure file sharing.

By deploying Office 365, CSA was able to avoid the prohibitive tail and VPN expenditures associated with their growing locations, sites and business units. As it turned out, the solution helped CSA reduce annual and future IT costs that could have been in the tens of thousands. With the solution’s simple-to-use, web-based tools and JGB’s support, CSA was able to avoid the cost of employing an in-house IT specialist continuing instead with their Managed Service agreement with JGB and enlisting Tier 2 support for SharePoint through Gel-e.

Over the long term, with a solution that can grow and develop with the organisation, CSA will be able to minimize costs and simplify management. All achieved whilst achieving savings on infrastructure, having predictable IT costs and much reduced risk.

This collaborative approach provided comfort for CSA as they had worked with JGB for years and were able to confidently hand over much of the back-end work without having to step away from the business. JGB also had a clear understanding of the pressures on the business and was able to shoulder much of the system-based technical work.

Gel-e brought its understanding of business processes and delivery to the table and the result was the perfect outcome. The cost-effective subscription model, with a bottom-up, organic approach to SharePoint, rather than large enterprise static solutions, was exactly what CSA had been looking for but had not been able to find in the broader marketplace.

It was the ability to be able to leverage the power and functionality of Office 365, and in particular SharePoint, that enabled Gel-e and JGB to innovate the customer’s business processes in new cost-effective and productive ways with the foundation of the solution being the Office 365 platform.

In addition, and of great importance to the company, Gel-e has had the opportunity to contribute to the productivity, efficiency and effective collaboration of an organisation such as CSA, which achieves a ripple effect far beyond the application of technology but in transforming communities.

THE solution, results, benefits

CASE STUDY: CONNECTING SKILLS AUSTRALIA

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JGB worked with Gel-e to drive the features of Office 365, which was part of the proposed solution for CSA, and unlocked the functionality of SharePoint to address the issues the business was facing.

JGB wanted to expand into the growing Cloud Services realm, and SharePoint in particular, but were not yet ready to invest the time and resources, both human and financial, that such a move entailed.

The “bi-lingual” nature of Gel-e with SharePoint expertise and business acumen allowed for a cohesive and rounded offering to be presented to CSA, and JGBs’ broader client base.

The P2P model offered by Gel-e meant that JGB could retain the service relationship with their client, remain the partner of record, offer an enhanced range of services and products to their clients, and avoid the risk of launching into the hire of a full time resource they may not yet need.

The Gel-e solution allowed a cost-effective, subscription based, delivery of the solution to the customer whilst allowing for a margin to JGB under the partner pricing model. This collaborative model is a win-win at all levels of the solution.

The complementary business values and ability to deliver even more value to the end-user or client is a mutually beneficial partner relationship between JGB & Gel-e that not only unlocks the power of Office

365 (in particular SharePoint), but allows them to expand their reach and profitability in the exploding ecosystem provided by the Microsoft platform, and creating a path where they can help their clients grow and become “customers for life”.

In developing its offering, Gel-e focused on demystifying the power of SharePoint and making it available to small business that in the past had not had the resources nor access to the “Big End of Town” systems.

The pre-configured business templates provided by Gel-e span multiple industries and requirements making it a simple, easy and seamless process for business owners for whom time is their scarcest commodity.

The development of the Partner model has allowed the Partner to drive a deeper relationship with its customer, Gel-e to open up the features of Office 365, and for the customer to be better positioned to deliver its’ high quality service, and for Microsoft to further achieve its’ stated goal of being the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential.

THE P2P benefits

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PO Box 6193, Upper Mt Gravatt QLD 4122e: info@gel-e.com.au w: www.gel-e.com.au t: 1300 975 226

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