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By moving to Microsoft Azure, we've helped SYMCA reduce complexity and simplify its setup.
Learn more about our ongoing relationship with SYMCA.
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Transcription:
Nick: SYCMA is providing services to the public of South Yorkshire, such as transport, adult education, creating jobs and opportunities, making a greener, healthier, wealthier South Yorkshire. Prior to Nasstar, we were limited due to underfunding over the years, so it’s on very ageing technology; we had to do some digital transformation just to react to that. Nasstar are very positive in the way that they engaged with us as SYMCA to take the organisation into the future.
Steve: We brought members of our team in, who are very people-centric. It’s that consultative partnership approach.
Nick: The way that we do collaborate and talk about this stuff, an open and honest conversation about what you can achieve and what you can’t achieve is absolutely invaluable.
Steve: The first project we kicked off with you guys was to migrate some of your key resources into Azure.
Nick: The websites weren’t reliable, they’d fall over, so once we’d engaged with you, we were up and running.
Steve: Working with a hyperscaler like Microsoft, who keeps us all together as a one kind of one big virtual team, to make sure that projects that are being delivered for SYMCA are offering the best value. I know conversations then started to talk to build out a digital strategy for SYMCA for the next five years.
Nick: There was no strategy in place for how technology should be used across the organisation. Nasstar organised a series of workshops that went across the organisation, tried to understand what the pain points were, and out of that we produced a strategy.
Steve: These changes don’t just affect the people internally here at SYMCA, these are things that genuinely impact the people of South Yorkshire.
Nick: During snow, all of the websites tend to come down because people will go and have a look to see whether the buses are running. Since migrating the websites into Azure the websites have never gone down again.
There is an issue prevalent in South Yorkshire; where children, they don’t have a bed to sleep in at night. We’ve seen children sleeping in baths and kitchen sinks. The initiative is to try and give a bed to people that are vulnerable and require it, and make their lives better. With the digital transformation that we performed with Nasstar, that’s given us a platform to expand the services that we will offer, and it allows them to go and do their work. Without you giving those tools to those people, you can’t do it.
My advice to anybody thinking about working with Nasstar would be, develop a relationship with the account manager. The account manager will go above and beyond for you and help you unlock various funding streams within Microsoft. Nasstar are very forward-thinking; they are here to help with that journey, which will enable South Yorkshire to keep moving.
