Croydon Voluntary Action

Lateral thinking stretches charity’s budget further

Working efficiently

Like all charities, CVA is keen to ensure that as much of the money it receives as possible is used to help people.

However, to undertake their role efficiently, CVA’s staff need access to Microsoft Office applications. So it asked a number of companies to put forward a proposal for desktop solutions.

Unlike their competitors, who simply focused on providing PCs as cheaply as possibly, Quadnet’s consultants did some out-of-the-box thinking and came up with a completely different solution.

In-depth review

Quadnet proposed that all the mainstream applications used by CVA should run on a single, central Citrix server, which they would install and manage on the organisation’s behalf.

It meant staff could use their existing machines to access the applications. If new PCs were needed they could be lower specification models and only a handful of people with specialist roles needed a fully-specified PC. Despite the small budget there was no need to compromise.

CVA has a significantly lower cost solution than traditional networked PCs

The system is highly secure and easier to backup, because all data and applications are held centrally

No IT staff are required, as Quadnet manage the solution

There has been no downtime in over five years