The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) is an independent public body that receives funding from the UK government. It works with millions of employers and employees every year to improve workplace relationships.
Through its work, it improves organisations and working life in the UK through the promotion and facilitation of strong industrial relations practice.
“It’s absolutely essential that we’ve got a strong platform of technology,” explains Paul Dowse, Head of Projects and Analytics at ACAS. “Without resilient systems, we’re not able to contact our customers and provide the services that they desperately need at times.”
To ensure the organisation has a resilient technology platform, the ACAS team conduct regular strategy exercises. In 2018, the organisation moved to a “cloud-first” approach following a digital strategy review.
“Moving to Microsoft Azure fitted in nicely with our digital strategy of being a cloud-first organisation,” says Indy Panesar, Head of Infrastructure at ACAS. “Security is quite paramount for us, and that was one of the key reasons we moved to Microsoft Azure.”
Having moved its on-premises infrastructure to Microsoft Azure, ACAS halved its running costs. Furthermore, when the COVID-19 lockdown was followed by a spike in home working, the organisation was well-placed to respond.
ACAS had already rolled out new Windows 10 laptops to all staff as part of its digital strategy and had a culture of supporting home working.
“We meet people in some of the most difficult and challenging times of their lives and, through what we do, we’re able to help them find a way out of that,” says Marina Glasgow, Deputy Chief Conciliator, ACAS. “One of the biggest things that the Microsoft technology gives us is the ability to move quickly into getting [Microsoft Teams] meetings set up and pulled together – for us to be able to say ‘ok, don’t worry, there is a way we can do this, let me explain that to you…’ and just to hear the relief in their voice that the service is still available to them.”
Indy Panesar was confident that the Microsoft Azure solution could manage unexpected spikes in demand caused by the changes to the way the organisation and the people it supports were working, particularly across the call centre operations. By producing utilisation reports, he helped the business to feel fully confident in the Azure infrastructure.
Paul Dowse comments: “Microsoft Azure has met everything that we hoped it could do, and possibly a bit more if I am honest, in terms of being that resilient foundation for the organisation enabling us to scale up and down as we need to.”
“Moving to Microsoft Azure fitted in nicely with our digital strategy of being a cloud first organisation.”
Indy Panesar, Head of Infrastructure, ACAS
Follow Microsoft