This case study was provided by Microsoft.
KARE provides support to people who have an intellectual disability and their families who live in the mid-Leinster region. The organisation was founded in 1967 by a group of parents and friends of children with an intellectual disability who believed that people with an intellectual disability are important and should be a part of their community like everyone else.
KARE’s services and supports focus on working with each individual to facilitate them to develop their skills and abilities and live the life of their choice. Because of these efforts, Kare recently became the first not-for-profit organisation in Ireland to be awarded five-star accreditation by EFQM (the European Foundation for Quality Management), putting them in the top 25% of companies in Europe.
Historically, KARE had never been at the cutting edge of technology. Until recently it was working with out of date software such as servers with Exchange 2003 and PCs running Office 2003. Late last year, KARE came to a crossroads and realised it needed to change the technology they were using, and saw immediately the benefits of being able to access and share information via cloud technology.
Paul Switzer, finance & ICT manager, KARE, said: "We knew we were missing out on the huge advances in technology and therefore the benefits of moving to the cloud were obvious. It could deliver a lot in terms of collaboration and the access to information needed in order to better serve our service users in their own communities."
"Our most important resource is time," said Switzer. "We always want to be better at helping our service users. Every extra minute spent due to old technology, and every added cost, takes valuable time away from our staff who believe strongly that their time and resources are best spent in the communities they serve with the people who need them most."
Many of the staff would count themselves as technophobes, according to Switzer, but KARE needed to modernise their platform and bring it up to date. However it also needed something that was easy to install and use with little or no management. The KARE team believed Office365 would offer a familiar platform which everyone would soon be up to speed on.
KARE worked with Unity Technology Solutions, a Microsoft Enterprise Partner, on implementing the right solution for them. They understood that they needed to maximise resources and ensure they were able to access critical data and information. Unity provided the expert insight and advice needed, understanding the importance and sensitivity of the data KARE and that its staff needed to access such information regularly.
Unity was able to help KARE move towards retiring three of their servers and migrate its e-mail and business data to Microsoft Office 365, and deploy SharePoint as KARE’s intranet.
Simon Kelly, sales manager, Unity Technology Solutions, said: "Office 365 is an easy-to-use set of Web-enabled tools that allows access to your calendar, contacts, e-mail and other important documents from anywhere, on any device. Office 365 worked seamlessly with the programs KARE already used, including Excel, Outlook, Outlook Web Access, IM and Presence, PowerPoint and Word. Cost savings have been achieved very quickly for KARE as instantly they have benefitted from predictable costs, no upfront infrastructure investment and paying only for the services they need."
"Office 365 and SharePoint have enabled us to move to an up to date technology platform," according to Switzer. "We no longer have to be in a KARE site every time we need to access information. By adopting easy-to-use cloud technology, accessing the information and data our staff need is much easier. We are now able to work and share critical information we need, anywhere and anytime we need it."
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