REC Case Study

Background

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) is the professional body for the recruitment industry. It represents nearly4000 corporate members, over 6,000 individual members within the Institute of Recruitment Professionals (IRP) and is responsible for the REC Code of Professional Practice.

Situation

The REC was planning to relocate which meant a number ofchallenges; the closure of two offices, relocation of 85 office basedstaff and supporting a number of remote workers. Reliable androbust communications and IT infrastructure was vital to support theneeds of all its employees through this change and beyond.

REC was also re-organizing its’ business in order to facilitate future business development, enhance communications and improve business processes by utilizing resources more effectively and efficiently. London Systems had to realign not only the IT infrastructure but also the telephony function to support the RECs business strategy.

Solution

London Systems designed and implemented a robust and resilient wide area network (WAN) to enable the secure and effective flow of information, which also provided expansion capabilities to meet any future requirements.

To accommodate flexible working practices, VMware was implemented using Dell thin clients, work-stations and laptops. In conjunction with Work smart Technology a Mitel IP telephony solution was used and London Systems facilitated the successful migration from the existing telephony solution to the new Mitel platform - it was essential that this migration be completed before the preceding sites officially ceased to operate.

London Systems also made sure that end user training was conducted prior to the move so that everyone could hit the ground running

‘London Systems take an interest...they understand who we are and what we do. They make things easy.’ Peter Corpus, Head of Operations and Systems at REC

Outcome

REC employees can now access their desktop from anywhere and remote users have more flexibility as they each have their own personal telephone number and can log on to the system from wherever they are.

The new network is robust, secure and resilient;

• Greater flexibility and transparency with more granular pricing
• Ability to flex services up or down in response to changing requirements
• Rationalized end user software and cut printer estate by 40%
• Enabled secure remote access for users
• Enabled the adoption of a standard way of delivering Windows application using virtualised infrastructure.

‘We had complete faith in London Systems during this challenging period, we needed to keep operational whilst undergoing very impactful changes.

We were supported at every step and there were no issues or major problems during the whole of the project.

We are delighted with the final solution and continue to enjoy a strong partnership with London Systems.’

- Peter Corpus, Head of Operations and Systems at REC