5-year IT Strategy for a national trade unions body

The Challenge for the Client

As with many corporate bodies, IT at the TUC facilitates all aspects of operational organisation including infrastructure, communications and learning support.  Significant change bearing on the TUC infrastructure in 2015/16 included space consolidation and office remodelling programmes, reduced government funding for Unionlearn and its associated staff shrinkage.  With data security a prime driver, TUC Management Services and Administration were also keen to find improvement opportunities across the infrastructure spectrum, and benchmark the value of current support agreements.

Our Engagement

Acert was recommended to the TUC and after initial discussions and a market review by the Head of MSAD, we were invited to propose a strategic consultancy exercise to develop a three-to-five year strategy.  On engagement we ran a series of workshops and an analysis of IT expenditure, looking at the key areas of value, risk, continuity, collaboration and opportunity.  The resulting report was presented to the senior executive team in Summer 2016; it contained four major recommendations and seven specific project proposals, designed to address The Challenge to the Clients discovered.

Value to the Client

The report was well-received and four of the recommended projects were commissioned immediately, with two more following later in 2016/2017.  The benefits of improved strategic leadership, collective working, risk mitigation and operational modernisation are already visible, together with a large £six-figure saving over the next three to five years of a comprehensive managed services engagement and Office 365 deployment.