Greater Manchester Police Police service becomes more agile
the customer overview Customer Greater Manchester Police Website Greater Manchester Police Number of employees Approx 170 Country or region Manchester, North West United Kingdom Industry Public Sector Customer profile GMP are one of the largest police services in the UK. Their key priorities are reducing and solving crime, increasing trust and confidence from the public, keeping people safe, reducing anti-social behaviour and countering the threat of organised crime and terrorism. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) are one of the largest police services in the UK, serving a population of around 2.7million. With a force in the region of 13,000 employees, their key priorities are reducing and solving crime, increasing trust and confidence from the public, keeping people safe, reducing anti-social behaviour and countering the threat of organised crime and terrorism. They aim to do this whilst also delivering value for money. Empowering an agile workforce is key to achieving their vision to become the most effective police force in the UK over the next four years, making the Manchester Metropolitan area a safer place with a greater visibility of officers.
Risual and Microsoft gave us a holistic technology solution through their engagement process with us and were able to offer a combination of products to meet our short term and future objectives, achieving our ultimate agile workforce. Mario Devargas, CIO, Greater Manchester Police Our new systems have laid the foundations for greater collaboration both internally and with external partners and organisations. This has resulted in the creation of a core, standardised platform that has already provided us with tangible benefits and a direct impact on the way we work. Mario Devargas, CIO, Greater Manchester Police
the problem With the move to their new headquarters in 2012, GMP were looking to drive their workforce agility agenda to enable people to work more flexibly and wherever they need to (subject to security constraints), to reduce the need and reliance on working from the headquarters and to introduce the concept of desk sharing as there are fewer desks now available. This would also enable employees to work from other police sites and partner organisations, which would not only create a flexible and seamless experience for the end users, but also enable the building of better relationships. change of business needs As the GMP focused on its key policing objectives, it also recognised the challenges that its legacy processes and systems presented, especially with the catalyst of the move to new premises. The organisation was looking to reduce their dependency on hard copy printed documents, minimise their physical storage requirements at their new location to maximise desk space, and improve document management and version control. Mario Devargas, CIO of GMP identifies the objectives of becoming a more agile police force Greater Manchester Police is focused on becoming the most effective police force in the UK and we recognise that to enable us to achieve our goal, we need to become more agile. With a workforce that is distributed across a wide range of locations and the need to share information quickly, reliably and effectively, we wanted to employ the latest technology to create a blueprint for a new way of working. Our new systems have laid the foundations for greater collaboration both internally and with external partners and organisations. This has resulted in the creation of a core, standardised platform that has already provided us with tangible benefits and a direct impact on the way we work.
the solution Microsoft Gold Partner, risual, in collaboration with Microsoft Services, engaged with GMP at an early stage to ensure that the agile solution met the police force s current and future requirements. Critically, the engagement process identified the need for scalability of any implemented solution and the detailed scoping was key to delivering the exacting requirements from a secure and collaborative perspective. It was soon realised that the introduction of a suite of products, in conjunction with updating existing technology, would deliver the overall solution and where possible outof-the-box products would be used. The combined solution included Microsoft SharePoint, Lync and Exchange. From GMP s perspective, Microsoft Lync will provide the end users access to instant messaging, Presence, conferencing and voice capabilities. It will also offer future functionality by allowing the police force to extend their Unified Communications features to include a unified email inbox, fax and voice call. The deployment of Lync as part of a holistic solution meant seamless integration with the other Microsoft Unified Communications technologies with centralised management, scalability and enhanced desktop sharing capabilities.
benefits Cost reduction GMP have benefited from a number of areas of cost reduction which include a reduction in email storage costs as a result of document sharing and collaboration rather than attachments through email. They have also reduced costs through the consolidation of technologies and the reduction of legacy bespoke applications through the resulting system integration. File storage costs have also diminished due to the removal of duplicated documents which were previously stored across multiple shared drives. Unified Platform The police force are now able to run on a supported unified platform offering resilience and disaster recovery as well as a standardised structure. The solution has also given them scalability for their longer term strategy. The deployment of Microsoft Exchange as an email solution has also ensured consistency of technology across the force. Increased productivity and efficiency The workforce now have access to information in a faster, simpler and more controlled way giving them templates, structured repositories and search and navigation functionality. Reduced physical desk space The new GMP Headquarters was smaller than its predecessor and therefore a reduction in the need for employees to work from a fixed location was critical to this project. The solution has delivered the benefits of desk sharing and remote working, which has reduced the physical real estate cost.
Greater Manchester Police is focused on becoming the most effective police force in the UK and we recognise that to enable us to achieve our goal, we need to become more agile. With a workforce that is distributed across a wide range of locations and the need to share information quickly, reliably and effectively, we wanted to employ the latest technology to create a blueprint for a new way of working. Mario Devargas, CIO, Greater Manchester Police
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