Routeways Centre Charity Is In Safe Hands

As a manager in a Plymouth-based charity which commissions and provides services for children and young people and families at risk of social exclusion, Mark Collings has a variety of responsibilities.

One of them is overseeing the IT systems in the organisation, so being able to rely on the expertise of the team at Business Computing and Network Services (BCNS) has been a tremendous help.

“I can now get on with doing my job knowing our IT is in safe hands,” he says.

He also believes that the fact that BCNS is a local organisation with an office nearby has been crucial. “I get to talk with people who know their subject and are not just sitting in a call centre with scripts,” said Mark.

“Before we found BCNS, our IT maintenance, network support and Internet was supplied by City College Plymouth but when they were unable to continue with the arrangement we needed to find someone that could support a diverse set of needs – and that included helping us to identify what those needs were!”

He says that BCNS helped the charity, Routeways Centre Limited, find a reliable Internet Provider, set up their mail server and network infrastructure and set up remote access and Blackberries.

“The combined knowledge of their team has meant they have helped resolve issues I encountered quickly and efficiently.

“The changes happened very smoothly and the only difference my staff noticed was a much more efficient IT system.”

“BCNS have been extremely helpful in coming up with solutions to the obstacles we have faced” adds Mark.

“We had a major problem with spam – I personally used to receive a minimum of 500 unsolicited emails every week and it was an issue for all our staff.

“As much of our work involves children and young people we were really concerned about these emails and their content – Viagra, pornography and virus threats to name just a few.”

“Our staff were also uncomfortable about receiving these messages and we spent a large amount of time deleting emails and creating junk folders.

“BCNS changed all that – they recommended a SpamTitan package and firewall solution hosted on a virtual server and the results have been absolutely fantastic.

“We have seen a dramatic reduction in our spam levels. From receiving around 500 unsolicited messages each week I can honestly say I can count on one hand the number of spam emails that have made it through our filter in more than 12 months.”

“We have saved so much time and, even more importantly, I feel much happier about the security of our technology and working environment.”

As Routeways Centre grows and changes – which is the nature of the sector in which they operate – they will continue to rely on BCNS to help identify and implement IT solutions to facilitate those changes.