Mind required the IT Infrastructure to be totally transformed and needed a scalable, reliable and secure environment to be able to cope with the fast growth of the organisation, and increase in users by over 50%, in a short amount of time. A long journey began over 5 years to roll out a completely new IT Infrastructure and CRM system. This included a full IT Governance review and a high-profile digital transformation and change program woven in to the IT Strategy in line with the overall business objectives.
Originally when Smartdesc first began to support Mind, a lot of the work was structured around maintaining the existing, very old IT systems to allow users to be able to work efficiently. The IT systems needed investment and in parallel to ensuring that everything was functioning as it should, there was a substantial amount of foundational work instigated to enable the right infrastructure to be designed and implemented to allow for successful fast growth. Working in an in-house / outsourced hybrid model, the Smartdesc team are responsible for helping to support over 1000 users, which includes; head office, 150 retail units, volunteers and stakeholders across the UK. Key areas of work include:
