Customer Challenge

A nonprofit Ministry based organization, headquartered in central Indiana, focuses on supporting churches, pastors, and members worldwide.  They recently hired an experienced Chief Information Officer (CIO) to increase their reach and mature their use of technology to interact with their members and donors. Historically, the organization had appointed the employee with the most technical acumen to lead IT and this left their IT capabilities extremely immature and ineffective. 

The organization already had a Managed Service Provider (MSP) in place to fill this gap, however the MSP was struggling to deliver the depth and scale needed to support IT operations as the nonprofit grew and their needs evolved. The problems were plentiful. User satisfaction was low, technology was a drag rather than an accelerator, and the organization often experienced interruption and downtime due to failed technology.

Managed Services Solution

The new incoming CIO was quickly able to see that the organization had outgrown the capacity and capabilities of their existing MSP and needed a new solution.

The organization had a few specific technology needs right off the bat (which are also very commonly seen across the nonprofit sector), which included keeping the personal information of their existing members and donors secure, using data strategies to attract and retain participants and supporters of their cause, maximizing current technology investments, and rightsizing IT support to the business while optimizing cost.

The organization decided to engage BDO Digital for help. In addition to delivering 24x7 monitoring, alerting, patching, support and advisory services, BDO Digital layered on additional services that aligned well with outcomes the organization was pursuing. These services included:

• Secure member/donor information - As the company worked to increase its cyber and data privacy posture, BDO Digital’s Managed Defense solution was layered on to provide 24x7 real time security event monitoring, detection and response services to protect the company’s data and endpoints. 
   
• Data strategy – The organization deployed an Azure analytics solution that leveraged BDO Digital’s managed services to monitor and provide support for critical ETL processes and analytics infrastructure.
   
• Rightsized IT support – The organization onboarded BDO Digital’s Service Desk to increase user productivity and satisfaction, deliver scale, and free up internal IT to focus on other projects.

 

Results and Benefits

With BDO Digital’s Managed Services, the organization has experienced less downtime and business interruption. Additionally, user satisfaction has vastly improved, and technology is helping the business expand.

The nonprofit now has deeper insights into their environment, health, activity, and risks. They are now able to make informed, proactive decisions based on accurate reporting and the guidance of an experienced team at their side.

In addition to supporting the organization’s cyber and data strategies, BDO Digital’s Managed Services solution allowed the nonprofit to eliminate in-house IT service delivery tools, optimize licensing, and consolidate management software. This resulted in roughly $100K per year in savings. Through well executed problem management, BDO Digital was also able to significantly reduce user support ticket quantities, resulting in a lower cost from BDO Digital to deliver Service Desk to the organization.
 

Next Steps

Since moving to a mature, holistic, managed services model, the nonprofit now has the confidence to continue their digital transformation. The organization, partnered with BDO Digital, can now shift their focus to business insights through defining and implementing a data strategy, hardening their security posture, and developing and implementing a cloud strategy. This new approach will increase their ability to support their mission and the many churches, pastors, and members that they serve worldwide.