The Challenge: Manage IT Planning, Outdated Systems and IT Staff Constraints.

Community IT provided help desk support and server management immediately, and worked with the client to provide interim Chief Information Officer (CIO) staffing, develop the annual IT work plan & budget, and interview and hire a full time IT Director. 

The client transforms the lives of low-income youth by connecting them to college and career. Working successfully with over 40,000 high school students each year, the client helps low-income students get to and through college.

The client was working with older, on premise software systems, slowing productivity and limiting space for file storage and backups. These issues were impacting their mission and urgently needed to be addressed, but they did not have capacity at the IT Leadership level. 

With so many overlapping immediate needs and long-term planning and budget concerns, it was important for the client to find a technology partner that could help them at every level of need, from help desk support to strategic technology planning.

The Solution – Managed IT, Interim CIO Staffing Support, and IT Planning

Community IT provided help desk support and server management immediately, quickly addressing mission-critical IT and implementing backups and system recovery basics to guard against business disruption.

Our team worked with the client to provide interim Chief Information Officer (CIO) staffing, develop the annual IT work plan & budget, and interview and hire a full time IT Director. 

The interim CIO performed an assessment and quickly developed IT goals for the client that could be implemented without waiting for a lengthy IT Director search to be completed.

The primary goal of the client’s immediate IT Infrastructure improvement project was to provide ubiquitous access to information, reduce the complexity and management of IT systems, and improve uptime to acceptable levels. With over 90 staff across 12 locations, centralized management had been too complex an endeavor. 

With Community IT guidance, the client developed a plan to transition to Cloud-based, industry-standard solutions. This would solve part of their dependence on in-house IT staff when such staff transitioned. 

Community IT provided vendor-agnostic and cost-effective recommendations for the Cloud platform, guided the client through the implementation and training, and was able to hand off a functioning IT system to the incoming IT Director after assisting in the search and hiring process.

The Results: A Successful Transition Offers Greater Capacity and Better Reliability

The client’s software and staff transitions proved to be a great success for their team and for Community IT. They improved the efficiency and reliability of their entire system, and set themselves up for continual improvement as their industry-standard platform has added capacity and functionality. Staff can now work from anywhere.

During the interim CIO engagement, Community IT also worked with the client executive leadership to hire a Systems Analyst to support their ongoing business processes. New staff in the IT department combined with careful planning throughout the process yielded overall cost savings while providing a solid foundation for budgeting and project planning going forward.

Community IT was able to help the client move to the right IT solution for them, which in this case did not call for long-term managed IT. We are always ready to support our clients as you face your real needs and constraints. We use our IT and nonprofit expertise to guide clients as you navigate your changing IT needs. You can be sure we are dedicated to the success of your mission and will help you find the solution that fits you.