2020 was a year that no business or organisation could have foreseen. Whilst BDS Solutions had rigorous business continuity plans in place, no one could have predicted the impact that the pandemic has had on our society or working practices, and the length of the interruption to our lives. After a challenging year, Managing Director, Derrick Foan takes a look back at BDS Solutions’ year and achievements.
As we entered lockdown and our business continuity plan had been invoked, our first priority had been to provide assurance that whilst staff were working from home to keep everyone safe, we would be maintaining the highest levels of service for our NHS customers.
With networking and systems integration underpinning our portfolio, we were there to offer vital support to the NHS and were quickly engaged in providing secure remote access solutions; implementing and configuring ‘Always On VPN’ to help maintain productivity for NHS mobile/remote workers, offering a seamless and transparent user experience.
This created an immediate focus for our technical team and on the product side, there was an increasing demand to install and support Directory Manager to enable NHS Trusts to more effectively manage workers changing roles and those being brought in to support the pandemic.
As we moved in to April and May, we were able to complete NHSmail migration projects ahead of the Exchange Online platform freeze, as well as deliver preparation and reconciliation services for those planning their migrations later in the year. Alongside our core support and consultancy, this created a busy lockdown and as the Summer months unfolded, there was an increased focus on security and the technologies that support remote working.
In July, we were proud to announce that we had once again been assessed and certified to meet the requirements of ISO 9001: 2015, the standard for Quality Management. Having achieved the ISO standard for quality since 1999, it is especially relevant at this time, as one of the core elements is the “management of stakeholder and environmental risks”; ensuring that we can deliver a consistent and robust service, whatever the scenario.
NHSmail, N365 and Azure
The easing of lockdown provided some welcomed respite through August and as we moved through late Summer in to Autumn, NHS Trusts were developing their business cases to make the most of the central Office 365 licencing arrangements (N365). A series of articles were published on our website to help with this and we have been busy providing proposals to support their endeavours:
BDS SOLUTIONS IS APPROVED BY NHS DIGITAL FOR NHSMAIL INTEGRATION
DIRECTORY MANAGER INTEGRATION WITH OFFICE 365
AUTOMATE NHSMAIL USER POLICY MANAGEMENT WITH DIRECTORY MANAGER
STREAMLINED, AUTOMATED PROCESS FOR AZURE LICENCE MANAGEMENT
DIRECTORY MANAGER IMPROVES MATCHING LOGIC TO MERGE ACCOUNTS
With NHSmail and N365 migration projects restarting and the new Directory Manager v3 functionality adding value, the new year is guaranteed to be very busy populating and provisioning the new Exchange Online platform. Conversely, with our off-boarding services also sought after, we will be migrating users off the platform, where the managed migration of NHSmail mailboxes to private Office 365 tenants is required.
Team effort
It has been a challenging year for everyone and it is with very grateful thanks to an experienced, dedicated and trustworthy team, that we have successfully navigated our way through and continued to provide exceptional customer service across all areas of our portfolio.
While expressing our appreciation and giving each other a virtual pat on the back, it is good to reflect on the building blocks of our continuing success:
- NHS focused product and service development
- skilful market analysis and knowledgeable positioning
- months and often years of portfolio refinement
- competitive, value for money pricing
- personalised CRM and proactive enquiry processing
- relevant and timely proposals
- receptive and perceptive sales lead management
- effective order processing and contract administration
- robust project management, planning and review
- experienced consultant assignment and technical engagement
- health check and single point of escalation, specialist support services
Above all, providing a high quality of service across every customer contact and deliverable.
We wish all our customers, team members and industry colleagues a safe and healthy 2021.