Swindon Borough Council

Building a Modern Workplace.

Swindon borough council | local government | 350 employees

The Customer

Located in the county of Wiltshire, Swindon Borough Council the town’s local government, providing services such as waste and recycling collections, road repairs and libraries.

As well as providing a vast range of public services, they use their legal powers, assets, access to targeted funding, local knowledge and influence to lay the foundations for Swindon to thrive in the future.

“risual was able to help validate our approach and provide us with some key lessons learnt from their experience. Their advice and support has been paramount to the success of planning and implementation.”

TRACEY ARNOLD, PROJECT MANAGER AT SWINDON BOROUGH COUNCIL

The Challenge

Swindon Borough Council employees have been using a Shared Drive stored on a local environment for documentation and collaboration. The business leaders were notified there were multiple pathways to access specific data. This would not be suitable to maintain long term nor would it be manageable for new employees as part of the on-boarding process. It was clear that the existing system was overly complex, and the hierarchical structure made it challenging for end-users to maintain and collaborate effectively.

With a remote workforce comes the added concern of security. It is crucial for any government organisation to have the appropriate security levels. As part of the shared area, it’s important that each and every employee can access the appropriate data. The Council felt that the existing local Shared Drive structure does not have the level of control it would like to have to support a dynamic business. This led to problems with version control, document authoring and documents being shared through email.

The Solution

To provide peace of mind and a secure platform, risual deployed communications and collaborations applications to help achieve the desired goals:

Microsoft 365

The Security and Compliance Centre within Microsoft365 (M365) is designed to manage all compliance features across all M365 applications. Linking to SharePoint and Exchange features to bring together the complete stack of Microsoft compliance capabilities.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams allows Swindon Borough council to collaborate across the organisation, embedding a better communication strategy and improving efficiencies by streamlining processes.

sharepoint online

SharePoint Online is the collection of cloud and web-based technologies that allows storage, sharing, and management of digital information in a collaborative way.

The ResultS

At the end of the engagement, the Council will see numerous benefits, including access to crucial data from anywhere and at any time, along with trusted security management.

Access to data anywhere at any time

Using SharePoint Online, the Council can work from anywhere at any time and on any device. Moving into the cloud enables employees to work flexibly without being reliant on local networks.

Cloud security

End-user roles and permissions can now be configured globally. Roles can now be tailored on a need-to-know basis and access granted for individuals working on specific projects.

House keeping

Ability to tag files with metadata and retention labels, making searching easy and simple. Critical documents now carry alert tags to reduce operational processes.