Winchester College - Centrality

Written by centrality2019 | Jun 1, 2019 10:02:56 AM

Winchester College is a leading UK independent boarding school for 13-18 year-olds. Founded in 1382, it’s home to some 700 pupils, employs more than 600 staff, and prides itself on providing an unrivalled combination of intellect, culture and pastoral care.

“Centrality created confidence from the beginning of our engagement, with their open-minded, consultative approach and relevant experience. They made it clear early on that the people were as important as the technology.
Steven Little, IT Director

At the start of the engagement, the College’s IT infrastructure was no longer capable of supporting these high standards, as part of a 21st Century educational institution. Teachers and pupils alike felt that technology facilities were growing ‘long in the tooth’ and in short, its IT was lagging behind an increasingly digitised world. Swift and extensive modernisation was required.

Centrality was introduced to Winchester College via a referral from a previous customer. It was immediately well received, due to the reassurance of its industry-relevant experience and more importantly, its approach to projects of this nature.

Centrality put Winchester’s needs first, and focused on delivering a customised solution to meet them – as opposed to simply trying to sell products. On this basis, the College chose Centrality to carry out its IT transformation

“Most impressive for us, has been Centrality’s ability to keep an eye on the end goal throughout the process. Their focus on delivering our original objective of improving the learning experience for our pupils has been reassuring.”

Before addressing the infrastructure itself, Centrality proposed a new itinerary for IT governance. It explained that because a large-scale IT change was going to happen, with implications for every one of the college’s teachers, pupils and staff, then this must be clearly communicated to a wide group to ensure adequate preparation.

The existing 30-minute weekly meetings were replaced with monthly two-hour ones, and membership was expanded to create a more robust forum for decision-making.

“Centrality is an extension of our team, jointly we’ve revamped our IT infrastructure and digitally transformed the college. We trust them as experts to leverage the right solutions, allowing us to focus our own time on creating the finest end user experience.”

“We used to educate the literati. Now we educate the digerati.”

Centrality’s technical expertise, consultative approach and ongoing support has proved invaluable for all at the College. Seen as an extension of Winchester’s own IT team, Centrality provides off-site helpdesk support which can be called upon when needed.

Because IT is now managed as a service, and bought according to demand, users enjoy an up-to-date, reliable and integrated experience which also reduces the burden on IT support staff so they can focus on providing users with improvements rather than being tied up with cumbersome maintenance and equipment issues.

Teaching is now more innovative, forward thinking and fluid, and teachers can use their initiative to create truly outstanding classroom experiences that benefit the entire school community.

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