Why religious organisations are embracing digital innovation.
We’ve recently completed a cloud migration project with the Diocese of Guildford, Portsmouth and Winchester, working with them to develop their long-term digital strategy and shift to digital services. The Diocesan IT Consortium comprises of the three Dioceses who are acting together to procure shared IT services and connectivity.
Religious organisations may not an obvious sector to target but technology is increasingly being used to manage and engage with parishioners. Recent Church of England digital research* shows that more and more people are using apps, smart speakers and social media to explore and engage in the Christian faith. A growing number of churches are also using specialist software like Churchsuite, a cloud-based church management system which currently has around 1,800 churches of all sizes and denominations.
Trusted Advice
The Diocesan IT Consortium were looking for a partner who could offer a true fully managed end to end service as well as support them to develop their future roadmap for significantly increased collaboration and this was the first time Transputec has worked in this sector. Any stereotypes we held were soon smashed once we worked with the IT Consortium. Rather than being risk adverse due to commercial restraints and slow to adopt, we found a forward-looking team, working hard to drive technological solutions across the organisation.
In response to their tender, we provided the client with several options. It may have prolonged the procurement process, but we don’t just respond to what our customers say they want. We’re there to give them trusted advice. They really valued that. It was the start of a low-risk journey with a two-phased approach. Through solid testing and close collaboration, we moved them to an improved environment. We first migrated them from the incumbent’s private cloud to a hybrid system combining O365 and our private cloud. We are now stabilising and optimising core infrastructure performance, restoring user confidence before moving them fully to the public cloud.
Matthew Jay, IT Service Contracts Manager, Diocese IT Consortium:
“We have transitioned seamlessly with a low-risk approach and overcome the obstacles that we once faced on a daily basis. Transputec has delivered the outcomes we needed, both on-premises and in the Cloud and we look forward to the ongoing modernisation of our processes to enable greater collaboration and shared working across our staff and service users.”
This was the first project I worked on after joining Transputec in January 2018, so it has been great to see the client journey from pitch to project implementation. I’m delighted to say that we are now in discussions with other Dioceses and the collaboration with Diocese of Guildford, Portsmouth and Winchester has been an excellent start to our specialism in this growing digital sector.
You can read the full case study here.
Stuart Salt
Director of Services
*Source: Church of England
