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Client
YWCA
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Industry
Not for Profit
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State
NSW
YWCA
The YWCA, Australia’s leading feminist organisation, delivers more than 50 programs supporting women across areas such as leadership, safety, wellness, domestic violence, child services and crisis support. Prior to 2018, the YWCA comprised a national association alongside eight separate member associations located across the country.
Quorum worked alongside the YWCA in 2018 to unify the distinct member associations into one single national entity, achieving an amalgamation of disparate systems that allowed all staff to operate under one entity.
Challenges
The transition between eight separate entities to one distinct entity required the transformation of many moving parts. Fiona Goldrick, Manager of ICT and Projects at YWCA, said, ‘we found each of the associations were being supported by their own service providers, and most were using very old technology. We needed to move everyone over to the national network and on the same domain.’ After vetting an array of vendors, Quorum was chosen to work with the YWCA on this national amalgamation.
‘Quorum had been recommended to us by another partner we used. We don’t have high technical knowledge, so we needed a partner that would understand that and work with our teams, have patience, and support us in uplifting our technical maturity. Quorum’s proposal was strong and their values really stood out. Their commitment to customer service and net promoter score was also really important to us.’ Sam Isaacs, Director of Transformation and Integration at YWCA.
Results
The differences for YWCA were stark, with Quorum’s work leading to multiple results and improvements evident in each part of their daily workflows. Immediate results included:
- A unified, leading-edge system with scalability potential
- Improved collaboration and communication
- A reduced carbon footprint through transitioning away from paper and to the cloud
- Seamless transitions to remote working
- Business continuity during COVID-19
- Facilitated the introduction of telehealth for at-risk customers
- Staff time freed up so they can spend more time with customers
‘The transition has meant that our people – who are spread across 27 separate sites – can finally collaborate. Before this project, people used to avoid using their computers because they took 40 minutes just to warm up. And we’ve gone from that environment to one that was 100% equipped to handle remote working when COVID-19 hit.’ Sam Isaacs.
Benefits to staff, including a feeling of care and prioritisation, are also evident thanks to Quorum’s implementations. CEO Michelle Phillips notes several tangible benefits to the organisation since the project’s completion:
‘It meant we had business continuity and could continue to support our customers (during COVID-19 lockdown). Another tangible outcome was the ability to build a collaborative culture to meet our goal of positively impacting 2 million young women and girls across Australia. We need our teams to be connected and collaborative…it will help us stay close to our customers’ diverse needs across the country. We can use technology to keep those conversations flowing and stay in touch with what our customers tell us they need.’
Solutions
Quorum’s work with YWCA commenced with a visit to each site in order to understand the nature of the systems.
‘They were in various stages of modernisation; some were fairly modern, and others had gone untouched for some time. We visited every single site and refreshed the network so their connectivity was up to standard and we could have full visibility across the site, managing their connectivity through to the cloud.’ Lars Clement, Quorum’s Operation Manager.
Quorum’s approach saw a complete shift to a cloud-first model across the entire organisation, supported by Microsoft 365.
- Before Quorum’s work, YWCA was very paper-based, with red tape and difficulty communicating slowing down the team. Multiple systems and databases caused issues, along with a lack of joint mailboxes, consistent emails and shared storage.
- YWCA required a secure transition with specific permissions integrated into the new system.
- Quorum developed a permissions matrix based on YWCA’s needs and use cases, building the right structure for permission management.
