Michael Joseph, Chief Finance Officer, Volunteering Matters –
“Moving to Microsoft cloud services enabled us to adopt flexible working far more effectively during the pandemic. Having previously relied on static servers and fiddly VPN connections, it has been a breath of fresh air to fully embrace M365. Our IT partners, Smartdesc, have been instrumental in helping us with this move, indeed we couldn’t have done it without them. Their affinity with the Not-for-Profit sector has proven invaluable at such a challenging time for charities in general.“
The legacy finance application was also moved away from a proprietary system to one built upon Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, opening the door for improved automation and integration.
Results
The charity is now running a fully cloud-based infrastructure, that scales up and down – without the need to ever do mass upgrades again.
Software is always up-to-date, and VM benefit from new features and functionality as it is rolled out across the
Microsoft ecosystem.
M365 has greatly simplified operations, allowing seamless remote working from anywhere, just at the time when it was needed most, as we all had to pivot to new ways of working.
Other benefits to the charity include:
- Future-proof, scalable platform, with continuous updates and a consistent user experience.
- Highly resilient, removing single point of failure servers and outdated Remote Desktop experience.
- Centralised cloud management of Users and Devices, without the need for any VPN.
- Microsoft Teams acting as a central collaboration hub for voice, video and file sharing.
- Microsoft non-profit grant scheme provides licensing that reduces operating cost.
- A Microsoft Partner that specialises in the sector and works collaboratively as a trusted advisor.
