NICE

NICE WAN enables collaboration, hybrid working and savings

The customer

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) provides evidence-based guidance that improves the outcomes for people using NHS, public health and social care services. The organisation’s 725 staff are largely based in offices in London and Manchester, with two hundred working remotely.

As a government-funded body, we’re acutely aware of the need to secure value from all our suppliers. Syntura’s solution has given us significant savings.

Catherine Wilkinson Acting Director of Business Planning and Resources

The challenge

Enable simultaneous calls from 42 video conferencing suites.
Let 200 remote users access on-prem virtual desktop infrastructure simultaneously.
Boost network availability and business continuity
Minimise network, telephony and travel costs.
Access NHS staff records that are only available via HSCN.

Why Syntura?

Value: Syntura’s bid won a competitive tender process. Value-for-money was an important factor.
Technical Fit: Syntura’s bid best met NICE’s throughput, latency, resilience, HSCN and SIP requirements.
Resilience: Syntura combined multiple carriers, paths and datacentres to minimise downtime.

Our Syntura account manager is very responsive. I know I can pick up the phone, I can send an email, and I will have a response as quickly as is possible… Other telecoms providers are more bureaucratic.

Barry Wilkinson, Associate Director of Procurement & IT, NICE

Benefits

Saved £20,000 annually by replacing 40-80 attendee in-person meetings with hybrid video conferences.
Can use 42 video conferencing suites simultaneously without harming telephony or remote VDI sessions.
One in four staff can work from home, accessing virtual desktop infrastructure hosted at NICE’s offices.
Enhanced network resilience frees IT staff from having to react to connectivity problems.
NICE can update staff records that are only accessible via the NHS’s Health and Social Care Network.

Meetings [with video & audio conferencing] are absolutely vital to what NICE does. Anything that interferes with their smooth operation, the entire organisation hears about it pretty quickly. Therefore we try to make sure everything’s resilient…”

Barney Wilkinson, Associate Director of Procurement & IT, NICE

Customer story