ci connect | Issue 1
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority enables home workforce
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (MF&RA) covers an area of 653 square kilometres with a population of 1.4 million business and private residents. With approximately 1,700 staff employed at its Community Fire Stations and administrative centres, effective communications are critical to providing a quality service. So when a secure access system to enable Senior Officers to work from home was introduced, the ICT Manager George Wood needed an Internet Access solution that was both effective and simple to rollout.
We all recognise the benefits of enabling people to work from home – improved productivity, quality of life and increased flexibility. However, there are connectivity and security issues that must be carefully assessed if the arrangement is to be successful. Community Internet has a range of solutions and can select the best one for individual requirements and manage the entire process to ensure that rollout is fast and simple.
Reduced administration
“We discovered Community Internet whilst working on a wider communications project and it seemed logical to investigate their capabilities for our remote working program”, says Wood. “Community Internet was able to offer a single contract covering home users across our region which reduced our administration effort. They could also offer a prompt and efficient direct support team and a dedicated technical account manager to resolve any queries. The single contract and the sheer simplicity of installation were key factors in our decision making process.”
Once Community Internet has selected the most appropriate broadband service and enabled the connection we will pre-configure the routers to match your needs and deliver them direct to your remote users. As soon as the system is up and running our technical support team will be on hand to deal with ongoing enquiries from the IT department and end users. As the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Association discovered, flexible and simple administration minimises disruptions while the centralised billing system facilitates accurate budgeting and reduces time wasted on laborious expense claim procedures.
“A major benefit of having just one supplier across the region is billing,” explains Wood. “Each individual pays their normal phone bill to BT, and MF&RA covers the fixed cost of the router and the low contention ratio broadband service by a single call off order on Community Internet”.
As one user commented, ‘It’s just like being in the office - but with better coffee!”