Halo, Halo, Halo – leisure trust spring cleans its IT function

As councils continue to contract out more of their core services to independent suppliers and contractors, the entities taking over these vital functions realise change may be necessary to deliver the high levels of service that end-users expect.

This is nowhere more true than in the leisure industry, where the emergence of trusts as standard-bearers of public sector service quality is creating IT challenges at both the front and back ends of their operations.

Halo Leisure Trust is a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2002 to manage nine leisure centres on behalf of Herefordshire Council. Halo’s in-house team of instructors and consultants tailors exercise and health programmes to user needs, experience and previous exercise history, whether they are a novice or seasoned gym user, want weight loss or to run a marathon.

Halo aims to deliver “innovation and excellence” in all that it does, while being recognised as a model of best practice in the leisure industry and an employer of choice for industry professionals.

Complex IT system
Historically, Halo’s IT function had rested in the hands of the council’s IT department. It was based across ten separate sites, with offices at Leominster providing the administrative and support hub. The servers however, were housed in the council’s Hereford headquarters.

The network ran over leased megastream lines of various capacities from Hereford to Halo’s other nine sites. Not surprisingly, the trust found this complex set-up time-consuming and costly to run and increasingly inconvenient to maintain.

“IT-wise we were struggling” says Iain Hayes, Halo’s Systems Manager, “and so that highlighted to us the need to look around and see what was actually possible, what was out there and what we could be doing differently.”

Cutting the cord
Accordingly, Halo decided to cut the cord of the council’s IT support late in 2005. That left them with an urgent requirement for a new IT and telephone network. The clock started ticking from Christmas 2005 - Halo management was given six months to carry out and complete the necessary changes.

The trust meanwhile was moving forward on a number of other fronts. To ensure that high levels of service could be delivered wherever and whenever customers visit, Halo had begun an 18-month project to overhaul their policies, processes and procedures at every site and that included IT.

“We recognised that we needed to be far more organised in our approach,” Hayes states.

Consultancy overview
The ball started rolling when Halo asked ROCC Computers – a nationally-operated IT solutions provider - to carry out a full IT consultancy overview. ROCC’s Bob Adshead, who oversaw the £2-3,000 IT consultancy overview project, explains what was involved. "We offer an initial consultancy service, formulate a strategy for the organisation's IT systems and services, then cost that as accurately as we can."

After undertaking a detailed assessment of the existing system and core business processes and discussing current and future IT needs with Halo staff at some length, the ROCC consultants came up with several strategy options for them to consider.

Rather than refurbishing the existing system, they suggested that a new one would prove both less expensive and easier to deploy, and therefore turn out to be far more cost effective. This option had the added advantage of making any future requirements, such as remote working, wireless connections, organisational expansion, Internet cafes and an intranet, perfectly feasible choices. Specific items could then simply be bolted on to the new system if and when needed.

Halo senior managers saw the sense of investing in a new faster system with room for add-on features, as Hayes explains: “It was at that point that we decided to take the leap and set up by ourselves. We thought that it would give us greater control over where we were going.”

Halo asked ROCC to migrate all existing IT systems to new hardware and install eight new servers. IT support services would be provided on a continuing basis, with new Microsoft software installed when needed under a complete systems overhaul costing around £150,000.

A fresh start
“Essentially, it was a dead clean start,” Hayes adds. “All the software, hardware, servers and network connections - it was like starting from new.”

The task wasn’t easy, recalls Adshead. “Halo had decided they wanted to change their support provider. In order to do that, we had to replace much of their hardware and software. Not only were the original IT support services provided by the council, but also the council had supplied all the network connections, supporting machinery, and the desktop PCs.

“When they ended their supporting agreement with the council, Halo had to replace all this equipment too. So that we could support them properly, we had to replace their entire IT infrastructure."

“The team’s initial recommendation – a leased-line network – was considered unaffordable, says Adshead. The new IT network is mostly broadband. Virtual private network (VPN) links have been made to a new data centre, served by two 1Mbps synchronous digital subscriber lines (SDSL) which have been bonded together to provide 2 Mbps pipes each way, utilising a relatively recent technology.

ROCC felt that SDSL technology was most suitable, as it gives a dedicated high-speed Internet connection that is efficient and economical. Because SDSL provides the same speed in both directions, the slow upload speeds that can lead to bottleneck congestion on ADSL networks are avoided, making matters much easier for users who need fast network response.

Thin clients
The higher bandwidth available enabled virtually all computer processing to be centralised. Eight servers have been located at the data centre, handling all Halo’s work, proving far easier and more convenient for the Trust than managing single servers and a host of PC’s at each separate regional site. ‘Thin clients’ replace PC’s taking up little desk-space and requiring minimum maintenance and administration.

“The overriding advantage of this new IT network, as compared to a more traditional one, is economic - cheaper running and maintenance costs. Thanks to this centralised design, the entire system is now far more reliable to run,” Adshead reports. “Using CITRIX technology means that further thin clients can easily be added to the network as required.”

"A broadband network is always a bit of a compromise," Adshead concedes, "as it's obviously less quick and reliable than our initial recommendation of privately leased lines, because you're relying on the public Internet to do your networking. However, it’s only a fraction of the cost.”

The feed-back from Halo has been “generally good” he says. “The new system is reliable, does the job, and at less cost to the organisation, with a better level of service and support."

Online bookings launch
Six months after ROCC had finished installing the new network, Halo was able to launch an online bookings facility. Now their clients can book their next squash, gym or swimming session at whatever time of day suits them best, whether that’s 7am or 10pm.

The higher bandwidth also enables Halo managers to work from home, using exactly the same broadband set-up as they do at work, as Hayes points out. “Because our network is based on broadband connections, anyone who has a broadband connection, which at the moment is pretty much everyone, can work from home, exactly as if they were at their desk.”

And Halo staff are pretty impressed with the level of ongoing IT support that ROCC has provided. “It’s a huge leap forward from where we were," says Hayes. "Before, we were dealing with a large helpdesk with an awful lot of operators on it, who are all really good chaps, but are not that single point that really understood what we were doing and why.”

Hayes is adamant that Halo made the right decision in choosing ROCC to set up and run its new improved IT system.

“We find that being our own bosses as it were, captains of our own ship, we're now able to make decisions that allow us to get the best out of our network, rather than fitting into somebody else's network," he enthuses.

“The reason Halo appointed ROCC to carry out these changes was simply because we were so impressed with the initial report that we got from them, and secondly, because although the network that they had suggested for us would be in ROCC's hands for the first year, we don't necessarily have to renew that contract with them. Their system design is based on recognised IT standards and does not ‘tie us in’. We could shop around if we wanted to and renew our contract elsewhere in the market place. We're completely free to do that."