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Halo, Halo, Halo – leisure trust
spring cleans its IT function
While As councils continue to contract out more of their core
services to independent suppliers and contractors, the entities
taking over these vital functions realise change may be necessary to
deliver the high levels of service that end-users expect.
This
is nowhere more true than in the leisure industry, where the
emergence of trusts as standard-bearers of public sector service
quality is creating IT challenges at both the front and back ends of
their operations.
Halo Leisure Trust is a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2002
to manage nine leisure centres on behalf of Herefordshire Council.
Halo’s in-house team of instructors and consultants tailors exercise
and health programmes to user needs, experience and previous
exercise history, whether they are a novice or seasoned gym user,
want weight loss or to run a marathon.
Halo aims to deliver “innovation and excellence” in all that it
does, while being recognised as a model of best practice in the
leisure industry and an employer of choice for industry
professionals.
Complex IT system
Historically, Halo’s IT function had rested in the hands of the
council’s IT department. It was based across ten separate sites,
with offices at Leominster providing the administrative and support
hub. The servers however, were housed in the council’s Hereford
headquarters.
The network ran over leased megastream lines of various capacities
from Hereford to Halo’s other nine sites. Not surprisingly, the
trust found this complex set-up time-consuming and costly to run and
increasingly inconvenient to maintain.
“IT-wise we were struggling” says Iain Hayes, Halo’s Systems
Manager, “and so that highlighted to us the need to look around and
see what was actually possible, what was out there and what we could
be doing differently.”
Cutting the cord
Accordingly, Halo decided to cut the cord of the council’s IT
support late in 2005. That left them with an urgent requirement for
a new IT and telephone network. The clock started ticking from
Christmas 2005 - Halo management was given six months to carry out
and complete the necessary changes.
The trust meanwhile was moving forward on a number of other fronts.
To ensure that high levels of service could be delivered wherever
and whenever customers visit, Halo had begun an 18-month project to
overhaul their policies, processes and procedures at every site and
that included IT.
“We recognised that we needed to be far more organised in our
approach,” Hayes states.
Consultancy overview
The ball started rolling when Halo asked ROCC Computers – a
nationally-operated IT solutions provider - to carry out a full IT
consultancy overview. ROCC’s Bob Adshead, who oversaw the £2-3,000
IT consultancy overview project, explains what was involved. "We
offer an initial consultancy service, formulate a strategy for the
organisation's IT systems and services, then cost that as accurately
as we can."
After undertaking a detailed assessment of the existing system and
core business processes and discussing current and future IT needs
with Halo staff at some length, the ROCC consultants came up with
several strategy options for them to consider.
Rather than refurbishing the existing system, they suggested that a
new one would prove both less expensive and easier to deploy, and
therefore turn out to be far more cost effective. This option had
the added advantage of making any future requirements, such as
remote working, wireless connections, organisational expansion,
Internet cafes and an intranet, perfectly feasible choices. Specific
items could then simply be bolted on to the new system if and when
needed.
Halo senior managers saw the sense of investing in a new faster
system with room for add-on features, as Hayes explains: “It was at
that point that we decided to take the leap and set up by ourselves.
We thought that it would give us greater control over where we were
going.”
Halo asked ROCC to migrate all existing IT systems to new hardware
and install eight new servers. IT support services would be provided
on a continuing basis, with new Microsoft software installed when
needed under a complete systems overhaul costing around £150,000.
A fresh start
“Essentially, it was a dead clean start,” Hayes adds. “All the
software, hardware, servers and network connections - it was like
starting from new.”
The task wasn’t easy, recalls Adshead. “Halo had decided they wanted
to change their support provider. In order to do that, we had to
replace much of their hardware and software. Not only were the
original IT support services provided by the council, but also the
council had supplied all the network connections, supporting
machinery, and the desktop PCs.
“When they ended their supporting agreement with the council, Halo
had to replace all this equipment too. So that we could support them
properly, we had to replace their entire IT infrastructure."
“The team’s initial recommendation – a leased-line network – was
considered unaffordable, says Adshead. The new IT network is mostly
broadband. Virtual private network (VPN) links have been made to a
new data centre, served by two 1Mbps synchronous digital subscriber
lines (SDSL) which have been bonded together to provide 2 Mbps pipes
each way, utilising a relatively recent technology.
ROCC felt that SDSL technology was most suitable, as it gives a
dedicated high-speed Internet connection that is efficient and
economical. Because SDSL provides the same speed in both directions,
the slow upload speeds that can lead to bottleneck congestion on
ADSL networks are avoided, making matters much easier for users who
need fast network response.
Thin clients
The higher bandwidth available enabled virtually all computer
processing to be centralised. Eight servers have been located at the
data centre, handling all Halo’s work, proving far easier and more
convenient for the Trust than managing single servers and a host of
PC’s at each separate regional site. ‘Thin clients’ replace PC’s
taking up little desk-space and requiring minimum maintenance and
administration.
“The overriding advantage of this new IT network, as compared to a
more traditional one, is economic - cheaper running and maintenance
costs. Thanks to this centralised design, the entire system is now
far more reliable to run,” Adshead reports. “Using CITRIX technology
means that further thin clients can easily be added to the network
as required.”
"A broadband network is always a bit of a compromise," Adshead
concedes, "as it's obviously less quick and reliable than our
initial recommendation of privately leased lines, because you're
relying on the public Internet to do your networking. However, it’s
only a fraction of the cost.”
The feed-back from Halo has been “generally good” he says. “The new
system is reliable, does the job, and at less cost to the
organisation, with a better level of service and support."
Online bookings launch
Six months after ROCC had finished installing the new network, Halo
was able to launch an online bookings facility. Now their clients
can book their next squash, gym or swimming session at whatever time
of day suits them best, whether that’s 7am or 10pm.
The higher bandwidth also enables Halo managers to work from home,
using exactly the same broadband set-up as they do at work, as Hayes
points out. “Because our network is based on broadband connections,
anyone who has a broadband connection, which at the moment is pretty
much everyone, can work from home, exactly as if they were at their
desk.”
And Halo staff are pretty impressed with the level of ongoing IT
support that ROCC has provided. “It’s a huge leap forward from where
we were," says Hayes. "Before, we were dealing with a large helpdesk
with an awful lot of operators on it, who are all really good chaps,
but are not that single point that really understood what we were
doing and why.”
Hayes is adamant that Halo made the right decision in choosing ROCC
to set up and run its new improved IT system.
“We find that being our own bosses as it were, captains of our own
ship, we're now able to make decisions that allow us to get the best
out of our network, rather than fitting into somebody else's
network," he enthuses.
“The reason Halo appointed ROCC to carry out these changes was
simply because we were so impressed with the initial report that we
got from them, and secondly, because although the network that they
had suggested for us would be in ROCC's hands for the first year, we
don't necessarily have to renew that contract with them. Their
system design is based on recognised IT standards and does not ‘tie
us in’. We could shop around if we wanted to and renew our contract
elsewhere in the market place. We're completely free to do that."
Learn More:
Visit
the Halo Leisure Trust Website
