We meet people when they're at
some of the most difficult and challenging
times of their lives
and through what we do
we're able to help them
find a way out of that.
ACAS as an organisation
is there to help organisations
and employers with all
kinds of workplace issues.
It's absolutely essential
that we've got a strong
foundation for technology.
Without resilient systems,
we're not able to contact
our customers and provide
the services that they
desperately need at times.
The last digital strategy
excellence we undertook
was around about 2018.
And one of the key outcomes
of that strategy review
was to ensure that we focus
on the cloud-first strategy.
The move into Azure fitted in nicely
with our digital strategy
of being a cloud-first organisation.
Security is quite paramount.
And that was one of the key reasons
why we did move to Azure.
We were able to up-skill our staff,
you know there's more
interest and engagement now
with Azure across our whole directorate.
Now, our running costs
are somewhere around half
what they used to be.
COVID obviously was a massive shock
to the system for every organisation.
Fortunately, in some ways for us,
we'd already rolled out
Windows 10 to everybody
and as part of that process,
we'd given everyone a laptop.
ACAS was quite a big
homeworking culture previously.
So we were confident in
delivering the solutions
for a homeworker.
However, you know, we did have
some concerns and some issues
around the capacity of infrastructure.
With Azure, as you know I was able
to kind of allay quite a lot
of those fears and concerns.
By producing use utilisation reports,
I knew that even if we
did have a spike in demand
or we started hitting some problems,
I was fully confident in
the Azure infrastructure
to be able to meet those
and to conquer them.
Enabled us to continue to take calls
particularly importantly,
to our contact centre,
who were as busy as they've ever been.
All of the platforms, including Teams
was fairly intuitive.
One of the biggest things
that the technology gives us
is the ability to move quickly
into getting meetings set
up and pulled together.
For us to be able to
say, "Okay, don't worry.
There is a way we can do this,
let me explain that to you."
And just to hear the relief in their voice
that the service was
still available to them.
People just seem to be
slightly more empowered
by what's at their disposal.
Azure has met everything
that we hoped it would do.
And possibly a bit more, if I'm honest,
in terms of being that
resilient foundation
for the organisation,
enabling us to scale up
and down as we need to.