Since the hospice receives less than 23% of its annual costs from government and has to fundraise nearly £6,000 every day just to keep going, restricting costs to a minimum was also a priority for the project. Delta Comtech Operations Director Geoff Barratt examined the options to enable the hospice to maximise the discounts available. 

Geoff explains, “Using knowledge I have gained from nearly two decades in the IT industry, I managed to link ECH up with a company called CTX who deal with donated software and hardware for charities. I helped to get them through the approval process and then assisted with ordering the correct products. This saved the hospice several thousand pounds on the overall cost of the project."

With the hospice relying on its IT systems 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, the work to set up the new network had to be carefully planned, and was undertaken over a weekend to minimise disruption, with crucial applications still available to hospice staff throughout the weekend.

As part of the project, we also looked at how IT could be used to improve communications within the hospice, and implemented a new internal website based on Microsoft SharePoint, where announcements, pictures, newsletters and documents could be shared easily amongst staff and volunteers. Improving remote access was also a crucial part of the plan; our solution was to provide web-based access which was both secure and easy to use.