The Nuffield Foundation

The Nuffield Foundation chose ramsac to refresh all their desktop PCs, complete a disaster recovery project, migrate the organisation to Office 365 and to provide an ongoing managed IT support service.

Who are the Nuffield Foundation?

The Nuffield Foundation funds research, analysis, and student programmes that advance educational opportunity and social well-being across the United Kingdom. The Foundation improves people’s lives, and their ability to participate in society, by understanding the social and economic factors that affect their chances in life. The research the Foundation funds aims to improve the design and operation of social policy, particularly in Education, Welfare, and Justice.

What prompted the move to ramsac?

Nuffield Foundation took the decision to tender their IT contract after persistent problems with their incumbent supplier, with problems ranging from a poorly maintained infrastructure to issues with customer service. Elaine Graham-Leigh, Finance and IT Administrator at the Foundation explained “We had had issues with customer service, users would call in an issue and be promised a call back that never came. We thought that was part of having outsourced IT, plus we had an ever-growing log of problems that the IT supplier didn’t seem to be able to do anything about.”

Why ramsac?

Nuffield Foundation went to tender and identified 3 potential suppliers, of which ramsac was one. Elaine explains how they chose ramsac, “What really stood out for us in the tender interviews was that ramsac were the only company that really ‘got’ Nuffield Foundation and the type of organisation we are, understood our ethos and how that would shape what we would want. We felt with the other companies, they worked in the way they wanted rather in the way the Foundation wanted, with ramsac we got the sense that they would work with us to do things how we wanted to do them. So, it was a cultural fit more than a technical competency or price factor that helped us to pick our new supplier. It was really clear about 2 minutes into our first meeting with ramsac, we knew they were the right supplier for us. It wasn’t even a question.”

Making the move and project work

After transitioning to ramsac, Nuffield Foundation began a programme of project work including a desktop PC refresh, a disaster recovery project and a move to Office 365. Elaine commented on the move to ramsac “It was surprisingly smooth, I thought it would be a lot more trouble than it was and I didn’t have to do all that much, I thought I would be spending months running around trying to find login details and I didn’t have to do any of that. When we were discussing tendering the IT, we debated if we should do it as we thought it would be a nightmare and actually it wasn’t.”

The benefits

Nuffield have benefited greatly from the move to ramsac, with the problems they experienced with their previous supplier gone and an infrastructure that works for them and not against them.

“The customer service level from the helpdesk is very good, we have not had one complaint from a user here about customer service issues, so that’s a great improvement. Also we feel we have a partner that can get our systems to where we want them to be. It has opened up a lot of possibilities for our infrastructure that we just couldn’t do before because we didn’t have a partner that would help us achieve those. It’s been a huge improvement, and we would definitely recommend ramsac to other organisations.”

Elaine Graham-Leigh, Finance and IT Administrator at The Nuffield Foundation