Cloud Adoption within Charities and Housing Associations

Greg Dean, Phoenix Sales Manager for Charities & Housing Associations, takes a look at the progress of cloud within both the Charity and Housing Sectors

“So much has been made of the ‘cloud’ and its features as well as its respective benefits to the modern workplace – with upwards of two-thirds of UK SMEs have adapted it into their businesses. Cloud technology, however, is not the sole preserve of the private sector – it also offers a range of value-adding benefits that would seem perfectly suited to Charities and Housing Associations.

As we know, data is key to any organisation – but managing it is not only timely but costly. The adoption of the cloud within the Charity and Housing sectors has seen many solutions being introduced to the market to support their forward-thinking strategy. Let’s start to look at the sectors in a bit more detail …

Housing Associations – Journey to the Cloud

When I think of cloud technology within in Housing Associations, I think WOW! Yes, WOW! Cloud technology has started to transform the way they provide services.

Innovative home technology such as smart-boilers can recognise a drop-in pressure allowing repair systems to despatch a plumber or electrician to the affected home. Imagine how this could streamline the customer experience, not to mention the time and money it could save!

There’s also been some recent testing within the sector with software like Amazon Alexa, which will be integrated with Windows 10 in the Spring so that users can request things such as outstanding rental balances just by asking for it. The potential is huge and an incredibly exciting time to be involved in this sector!

Charities – Journey to the Cloud

As we know, Charities are under immense pressure; they need to be communicating closely with donors, efficiently and effectively to maintain and grow revenues. This is coupled with the challenges of having the right digital technology so that staff can streamline administrative tasks, to save costs and allow them to invest more time in the people that matter – supporters, members, stakeholders and Volunteers.

The challenge is, how are they going to do this? Well, let’s look at a charity and the cloud solutions it has adopted to release the pressures:

“JustGiving turns big data into big donations with Azure”

JustGiving recognised that the internet had become a platform for people to connect with causes that they care about, and has been using this medium to link donors to charities for over 15 years. Recently, they wanted to understand more about the relationships that link people and the causes interest them, and to find out why donors connected to a particular charity at a given time with the goal of increasing donor engagement.

JustGiving has seen tangible results; greater awareness for each cause, inspiring more people to take action and do extraordinary thing to raise funds for their chosen charity and that means that every great cause gets the funding 

they deserve – learn more here.

“We realised the technology we had in couldn’t provide a solution and the numbers were too great to generate personalised experiences on the fly so we looked to the cloud to the raw computing power that we tap into and scale from time to time.”

Richard Atkinson – CIO, JustGiving

READ MORE

Concerns with Cloud Adoption

Although there may be several concerns, the one I hear most often is ‘how would we control costs?’
What the cloud adoption does, in most cases anyway, is save money over a traditional data centre.

Expenses, however, can still add up quickly or become inflated if the wrong decision is made. This can be linked back to having a team with the necessary cloud experience and expertise to choose the most relevant cloud provider and to make use of the proper features to help ensure costs are kept to a minimum.

If this is a concern of yours, then worry no more! We can support you with our Cloud Platform Management Tool.

To conclude, I believe that cloud will play an increasingly important part within the Charity and Housing Sectors. Here at Phoenix, we are already working with customers who are looking to drive productivity, optimise their infrastructure and drive outcomes from their data – cloud plays an ever-increasing part in this, every step of the way!”

On-Demand Webinar: Azure – Where to Begin

Ready to Learn More?

To start your Cloud Journey, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the Phoenix Team on 01904 562200, email [email protected] or complete the form below:


Although every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of the above article, Phoenix Software Ltd cannot be held responsible for any opinions or information provided therein and as such is not liable for any damages caused by a customer’s reliance upon this information.