Sovereign Business Integration is set to deliver fully-outsourced IT services and support to Thrive Homes under a contract running until the end of March 2012. Sovereign will provide IT helpdesk support for Thrive Homes staff, server and network management, systems administration on business applications and project management for the delivery of key IT and business improvement projects.
Philip Day, resources director, Thrive Homes, said, “We reviewed our back-office functions to find out if they were supporting the organisation effectively and if we had the right skills and resources to achieve our business objectives. At the core of these objectives is a requirement for a stable IT infrastructure, and an IT approach which can support the rapid development of front-line customer services as well as day-to-day support for our 120 staff.”
Thrive decided that outsourcing its entire IT function, including two staff under a TUPE agreement, would deliver the necessary skills and resources needed to support specific projects and IT systems.
Thrive will review its contract with Sovereign in 2012 once it has determined which elements of the outsourced service work best for Thrive and which can be incorporated into a longer-term-contract.
Day said, “Sovereign was well-placed to meet our requirements as its staff and consultants already knew Thrive Homes and our systems through their work on our housing management system. We needed to react quickly once we had made the decision to outsource and it made sense to approach an existing supplier.”
