Maxsum Consulting has enjoyed a long partnership with The Centre for Non-Violence for approaching a decade.
The Centre for Non-Violence, or CNV, is not-for-profit organisation committed to supporting and promoting women’s and children’s rights, safety and empowerment. From its Bendigo base, CNV services the Loddon Campaspe region, delivering services and programs through a continuum of interventions: prevention, protection, recovery, counselling and support. CNV also provides opportunities for change for men who use violence and family members, with a strong emphasis on promoting accountability.
To support their important work towards achieving their Vision of gender and social equality in a violence free world, CNV’s strategic plan sets out a number of pillars they intend to focus on, which Maxsum seeks to contribute to and support by way of business technology excellence.
- Strong partnerships and collaboration
- A sustainable business model
- A strong culture, staff and team
- Demonstrated social impact
- A strong voice amplified through contemporary channels.
In the early days of the Maxsum-CNV relationship, Maxsum service was centred on providing ad-hoc reactive technical support. As the organisation’s size and the need for its services grew, CNV found themselves coordinating work across two separate sites. Making the transition from purely a technical services arrangement to formalised Managed IT Services facilitated more structured growth across these sites.
As a Managed IT Services client, CNV has access to a service level guarantee, after-hours support access, remove incident management, proactive monitoring of their business technology systems, and use of the Maxsum Support Portal tool for the direct reporting of IT incidents.
The relationship with Maxsum has lasted over a long period because they have been incredibly responsive to what we need. Maxsum go above and beyond what is expected of any business provider.
Margaret Augerinos, CEO The Centre for Non-Violence
As 2017 approached, CNV sought to relocate these sites into one central office location. CNV engaged Maxsum, as their Managed IT Services provider, to assist, advise and support them realise this major move into an all-new facility and meet the demand they now had for truly word-class business technology.
Maxsum worked together with CNV from the early planning stages of their move, even as the new premises were still under construction. This enabled Maxsum to:
- Design and deploy a new, purpose-built wireless network:
- Work directly with the builders to ensure cabling was installed to support the business technology implementations that were to follow;
- Ensure the planning and fit-out of meeting room, interview rooms and workspaces were designed to accommodate the latest audio-visual equipment, including interactive whiteboards, an electronic sign-in system, and a meeting room management system designed to protect and ensure maximum privacy.
CNV’s need for future scalability was front-of-mind for the entire project. In addition to its Bendigo site, CNV needed to support remote sites in Echuca, Maryborough and Kyneton, and needed to ensure capacity to accommodate further future growth. Being involved in the business technology upgrade from the build-stage ensure that Maxsum could build in scalability, literally, from the ground up!
Maxsum has been really great at working with us to think about what options exist, how we can best use technology to support the work that we needed to do, and to ensure our staff were really well equipped to do the important work that they do.
Margaret Augerinos, CEO at CNV
Three of the most notable gains Maxsum has helped CNV to realise through employing world-class business technology strategically across their organisation have been:
- Making the transition from a traditional telephone system to Unified Communications. This has given CNV:
- Internet-based communications and telephony integrated with Microsoft Outlook
- Double the speed and capacity of their traditional telephony set up, but at a cost saving of more than $18K p.a.
- Twinning of mobile phones/desktop phones so calls can be answered from either device
- Auto-attendant and advanced presence management feature that facilitate easy call flow adjustments and rerouting and a live in-out board display.
- Implementing a world-class digital Meeting Room Management system that could cater to a scheduling, privacy and anonymity needs CNV had for engaging in client meetings onsite at CNV.
- Scoping and Implementing Microsoft Teams across the organisation, including the delivery of Train-the-Trainers training and Adoption Success Support.
Certainly, there will be changes [in the future] and we will need to have an IT Provider like Maxsum who is willing to try things, to help us find the best solutions for new and emerging problems, and opportunities that technology provides. This will be part of the work we’ll be doing down the track with Maxsum.
Margaret Augerinos, CNV.