Enham Trust

Enham Trust is a disability charity based in Hampshire that supports disabled people to live, work and enjoy life to the full, as independently as possible. Throughout their near 100-year history they have provided vital care and support to over 250,000 disabled individuals with wide ranging physical and learning disabilities.

Due to the nature of their work, the Trust holds considerable sensitive and confidential information pertaining to service users and their families. Any kind of data breach would have far reaching implications that would affect thousands of people. 

The challenge

Enham Trust’s existing infrastructure made good data handling practices difficult to maintain. It also made it frustrating to quickly and effectively disseminate information across the Trust; e.g. sharing policy changes, training documents, urgent updates regarding service users or examples of best practice to help the teams to deliver the best possible support. The existing setup was cumbersome, out of date and made getting access to important information increasingly difficult.

Coupled with the security limitations in their existing system, Enham Trust recognised the need to introduce a solution that improved security while making it easier for their geographically-dispersed teams of workers to collaborate and share information.

The solution

Addressing the security concerns was a top priority for Enham Trust. By moving from Office 365 to Microsoft 365 they would have access to Endpoint Manager and Advanced Threat Protection whilst incorporating their existing SharePoint and OneDrive solutions.

Endpoint Manager allows the Trust to not only effectively manage their devices and applications across the organisation, but also improve productivity. This eliminated the need for the existing Citrix Farm, reducing costs and saving the Trust considerable effort in managing the legacy IT estate. Coupled with the Enhanced Threat Protection, the Trust was able to shore up its security and safeguard against malicious attacks.

Included within Microsoft 365, the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 brought with it a host of new features. The Trust also benefitted from improved stability and regular security updates, helping to maintain a productive ecosystem. Additionally, the migration to Microsoft 365 reduced the amount they were spending on individual software licenses from Microsoft and other third-party vendors.

The improved infrastructure made it possible for the Trust to fully utilise SharePoint and OneDrive. This allowed them to meet their objective of providing a collaborative working environment for everyone, no matter where they were based in the country.

The teams can now share work and information in a far more agile way. This not only improved efficiency but also made it far easier for teams to adopt new initiatives or new approaches to support.

The outcome

By utilising the power of the Microsoft Cloud, Enham Trust has been able to deliver a secure, flexible and productive working environment. This allows a diverse and dispersed workforce to work securely, effectively and collaboratively wherever they are.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic happened last year we simply would not have been able to operate remotely in the same way we do today. The systems would not have been able to deal with the demand. Utilising the power of the Cloud, we have been able to continue to operate across all open areas of the business with little to no change in our day to day working habits. This, to me, further proves that moving to the Cloud was the right choice for the business”
Phil Blake, Head of IT at Enham Trust

You can find out more about the vital work of Enham Trust by visiting their website: www.enhamtrust.org.uk.