A work-from-home deployment for thousands of front-line health workers, a four-month merger of two organisations' IT systems, and a Teams deployment for outback construction are the finalists in the Workforce Empowerment category of the 2022 CRN Impact Awards.
The three CRN Workforce Empowerment Award finalists are:
- Arinco’s consolidation of Greater Western Water's IT environments
- Logicalis’ work-from-home enablement for Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
- Lettscom’s Teams deployment for RJE Global
Arinco consolidates Greater Western Water's IT environments
Melbourne-based water utilities City West Water and Western Water were merged in July 2021 to form Greater Western Water (GWW) as the city's west was experiencing a population boom.
Crucial to the new utility's merger was the integration of the two different IT systems into a single environment, with Arinco brought in to provide advisory services, design and implementation over a period of less than four months in time for the merger's completion.
GWW was bringing together multiple on-premises data centres, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 tenants and a variety of software-as-a-service business applications in the merger, as well as two separate IT systems, IT teams, chief information officers and completely different structures.
Arinco had to complete the task while also ensuring it wouldn't compromise the user experience of the combined utility's 580,000 customers and 1200 employees.
The migration was done in a staged approach, with the non-critical activities were postponed until after the cutover date to reduce risk while delivering business requirements.
Upon completion, GWW's new combined IT environment resulted in reduced overheads, with the savings reinvested back to reduce more overheads. Arinco said the utility now also has a reduced environmental impact with the combined IT environment, while its customers will also see reduced annual bills.
GWW also saw its employee satisfaction improve, as well as usability. Device upgrades have also enabled remote workers to get regular, cloud-based updates, ensuring staff were able to access any information or facilities they needed no matter which office or off-site location they visited.
The project is another feather in Arinco's cap after winning the 2021 CRN Fast50 Awards.
Logicalis work-from-home enablement for Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
When front-line health workers and immuno-compromised patients are at the centre of a work-from-home story, it escalates from a business-critical situation to a matter of life and death, Logicalis pointed out in their awards entry.
After the pandemic hit, Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre moved entire departments and business functions to remote work during the pandemic. But long-term, effective solutions weren’t available to all at first, and while support services like telehealth solved a few issues, they didn’t solve all of them. A better, permanent solution was required, Logicalis told us.
Key goals included maximising onsite space, making each employee experience consistent regardless of location, maximising value from existing platforms and keeping people connected to their purpose their team and their organisation.
Logicalis ran more than 30 workshops with a broad spectrum of Peter Mac’s departmental staff, coming up with a range of ‘personas’ to categorise more than 3500 staff members - these personas ranged from ‘Onsite Patient Care’ to ‘Mobile Anywhere’. This gave a clearer view of the technological needs, clarity to roles and opened eyes to other colleagues’/cohort’s responsibilities.
Staff members were also categorised to understand licensing requirements, and moved from Office 365 to different Microsoft 365 plans. The solution also took advantage of Microsoft MDM, Teams, AutoPilot, InTune and the Always On VPN.
In the first year of the three-year project, the customers’ commitment to remote working and hybrid meetings has earmarked 104 formerly permanent desk spaces for reallocation. Business support functions at the main Hospital & Research facility in Parkville have been identified for a transition to the administrative headquarters in Elizabeth St, which will open up more clinical and research space, and further reduce potential health risks from non-essential foot traffic.
Lettscom Teams deployment for RJE Global
Projects don’t have to be worth many millions of dollars to be worthy of attention – this Microsoft Teams deployment by Lettscom for Australian-owned engineering and construction company RJE Global is one example.
RJE Global has several larger offices and many remote workers who needed to work from home and while travelling all over Australia, including to outback construction sites, and overseas. However the company’s phone system relied on an expensive and outdated technology that hampered communication options and locked it into a carrier’s MPLS framework for Internet and connectivity only.
Lettscom provided the Access4 cloud-based PBX with Teams integration, which gave the RJE IT team greater flexibility and controls. This was especially valuable as their workforce moved to work from home during the pandemic. The system took a few days to rollout wit minimal downtime.
RJE Global reports that the system performs well, even in less than perfect network conditions in the outback. It has simplified the organisation’s network infrastructure, saving the company thousands of dollars per month, and given it a choice of working with different internet carriers.
Lettscom continues to assist the RJE IT Team but the majority of the administration work can be handled by RJE’s team.
Announcing the rest of the CRN Impact Award finalists and winners
Look out this week and next week for CRN announcements detailing the rest of the finalists in the 2022 CRN Impact Awards.
The CRN Impact Awards winners will be revealed and celebrated on stage at the gala awards ceremony and dinner on August 25th at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort on the Gold Coast, as part of the CRN Pipeline 2022 conference.
The awards ceremony and dinner will be an opportunity for finalists to share their success with CRN journalists and the wider channel community and to network with Australia’s IT channel award winners. It will also be an opportunity for non-finalists to learn which channel partners kicked meaningful goals for customers in the last year, and meet them in-person.
Channel partners that attend the CRN Pipeline conference from August 23-26 at the same location can also network with Australia’s IT channel leaders and immerse themselves in top-class talks and roundtables about key business challenges and opportunities including staff shortages and hiring, economic outlook and key growth prospects.
Attend this year's premier channel awards, networking and strategic talk-fest - see the CRN Impact Awards and CRN Pipeline 2022 agenda.
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