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Congleton Town Council
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Background.
The Town Council, as the most local, democratically elected tier of government is uniquely placed to lead, represent and work with the town’s communities, to enhance the quality of life for the residents.
In April 2006 the Council adopted its first strategy “Making Localness Count”, 2006-2008,
in which it set out to develop the capacity necessary to operate quality local services for local people and businesses, and to put in place a partnership Network with which it could begin the regeneration of the Town. The Council’s new strategy “Backbone of the Community”, which was adopted in April 2009 seeks to
build on these foundations and capitalise on the current surge of energy within Congleton.
Change in Requirement.
As the Council developed it required a new infrastructure and IT was high on the list of priorities.
Project Management.
Having supported CTC (Congleton Town Council) for three years prism was asked to design and implement an IT and telecoms infrastructure that would meet the needs of modern business moving forward.
The brief consisted of multiple areas that had to be addressed.
Reliable.
The Council requested reliability in their brief acknowledging that IT down time in a modern organisation means people down time, this can represent a productivity cost that no organisation wishes to bear. To address this prism specified tier one branded hardware with comprehensive warranties that will be managed on their behalf.
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Scalable.
It was deemed paramount that the Council IT infrastructure be scalable, not just to accommodate the needs of the growing team but also with the multiple
requirements and potential tenant requests the Town Hall would be generating. All works were conducted sympathetically to the historic building and without
permanent damage.
Secure.
All businesses are aware of the risks surrounding data security and aim to protect their customers and employees personal details. As an organisation concerned about the continuity of their operation and the privacy of the stakeholders CTC were keen
to implement a disaster recovery and offsite storage system as part of their requirement. Utilising the prism support and security products prism was able to fulfil their requirement.
Supported.
As any growing organisation knows day to day incidents for support, general maintenance and disaster response can be time consuming and anti productive, often leading to non resolution or one member off staff becoming a designated helper and not focusing on their own responsibilities.
The Town Council were keen to outsource this burden and allow key team members to focus on their core activities. Prism supply telephone and remote support within 60 minutes to all requests for support and on site support often on the same day.
In addition to this CTC also enjoy routine engineer visits to keep all systems performing at their best, this also represents a great opportunity for all staff members to have face to face time with their engineer to ask any questions they have.
Licensing.
CTC wanted to ensure that users were not tempted to install their own software that may have a security and licensing
implication.
As a Microsoft Partner prism supplied all licensing and manage the network to ensure no rogue applications appear. Remote Access for key personnel CTC required multiple users to login to their systems to share and amend files even when not located in the Town Hall offices.
A dedicated server with VPN (virtual private network) access was implemented and continues to be managed to accept and deliver regular communication and data from authorised staff.
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