Our Customer

Bournemouth Borough Council wanted to improve the quality of its library services to better meet the educational and recreational needs of  the town’s population. The council appointed Allied to provide a complete range of fully managed IT services for all 13 public libraries in the town. They wanted a flexible solution, offering consistent service levels across all sites, and built around the needs of the town’s library users. These services were to be provided for five years, alongside Allied’s separate contract to deliver a complete technology refresh for the library.

Allied was required to help the library pursue campaign goals, such as promoting reading and literacy; helping enhance economic competitiveness; promoting lifelong learning; adding quality to life, and more.

Objectives

Through the project Allied aimed to:

  • Provide a flexible managed service with consistent quality standards across all 13 library sites
  • Comply with stringent council guidelines and promote a number of additional library campaigns
  • Deliver the managed services by a given deadline, with penalties for delays and failure to meet SLA

Solution

Allied’s tailored service offer to Bournemouth Borough Council included:

  • Provision of an expert project management team, including system designers and consultants, project managers, technical staff and back-office support
  • Design and full documentation of each individual managed service within the overall portfolio – including technical and support processes
  • Taking on responsibility for other areas related to IT and all third-party suppliers. These included the providers of all library software, IT hardware, network cabling, printing facilities, internet, online management, off-site helpdesk and much more
  • Ongoing provision of the managed services for the five-year duration of the contract

Benefits

After successful implementation, Allied managed to achieve:

  • Satisfactory implementation of the managed services portfolio on time and without penalty
  • Improved customer service with service levels of over 97% against SLA on average, resulting in higher satisfaction levels
  • Ongoing operational savings and benefits from Allied managing third-party supplier relationships
  • With Allied, the library service has attracted a whole new generation of readers and members, and received the ‘Better Public Buildings’ award from the Prime Minister’s office

Keys to success

Through the project, Allied and Bournemouth Borough Council have achieved:

  • Excellent working relationship

“The Library Service has developed an excellent working relationship with IT sub-contractors through the staff on site and management teams of suppliers. Regular meetings help to ensure that issues are dealt with quickly and clarity of roles of both library staff and contractors help to ensure the delivery of effective and efficient services. The result is high quality services valued by customers and staff.”

Shelagh Levett, Head of Information Culture and Community Learning, Bournemouth Borough Council

  • Knowledge transfer – Allied’s partnership model means ongoing knowledge transfer to the library’s first line support team.
  • Contract renewal –At the end of the initial contract, Allied were reappointed for another five years, despite strong competition.