Active Sussex

Anthony Statham, Chief Executive, Active Sussex: Active Sussex are a charity, also limited by guarantee, and our main purpose is around physical activity and movement. We look to get people active that might face barriers to doing that.

Some of the areas we may lack capacity or capability in are some of the skill sets, because we’re set up to deliver our strategy, and being flexible means that sometimes we need to go out and procure services.

One of the biggest challenges that we had in the last year was an office move, which meant that we no longer had IT services available to us. The main sticking point, which did keep me up at night, I’m not going to lie, was around IT support. We operate an agile hybrid working policy, so that meant that we needed to look at hardware and any software and support services around that, and we just didn’t know where to start.

It was through contacts here at the Sussex Innovation Centre. We were looking for IT support, we didn’t know where to start, and we spoke to some of the colleagues at the Sussex Innovation Centre. They were very helpful and pointed us in the direction of Ingenio, who work with a couple of other companies within the building, and that’s how we first came across Ingenio.

The same email was sent to three different companies, and within an hour, might have been less than an hour, Ingenio got back in contact with me and I was in a meeting that afternoon to look at what support we needed. The other companies, out of interest, never even replied. It goes to show the difference in that quality of service right from the off.

To be honest, the onboarding was seamless. When we moved in here in January 2023, for the first couple of weeks we had technical support in fitting out the office, the installation, and then the onboarding of staff, so getting their laptops and getting them up to speed with how that would work. All questions were answered, and the staff are all really friendly, which is helpful.

The thing that’s really helped is we’ve had ongoing support. A few weeks later we did a risk assessment session. We just went through a bunch of questions, because if you don’t know anything, you go, “Right, we’ve got a laptop, we’ve got some IT security at a basic level, that’s all right, we’re covered.” But actually, you’re not. That highlighted a number of areas that we needed to really tighten up on, and that’s been the biggest help and support.

There were various questions from staff, just onboarding things really, to get them up to speed, and they were all dealt with. The other thing is we had some pre-existing laptops that we needed to keep, and there were a few challenges getting them up and working properly, and all of them were dealt with.

What’s been helpful from a senior management point of view is that if there’s anything that needs authorisation, you’re always copied into that email, but you’re not copied into every single one. So if it’s small scale, someone’s Teams isn’t quite working right, it’s just dealt with, whereas if it’s something that needs a bit more attention, that’s brought to you straight away. It’s easy to pay, by direct debit. It makes my life a lot easier than other processes.

Customer first, authentic, and when they say they’re going to do something, they do it. Everything they put on the website is true. Genuinely.

I might get a message that says, “Oh, I’ve got this going on,” and I’ll say, “OK, you need to contact Ingenio about that.” Then they’ll come back going, “Oh, they’ve done it already.” It’s brilliant. The feedback from the team has been overwhelming. There’s not been anything they’ve not sorted.

What I’ve found really heartening, because we do some work in the area of apprenticeships, is that some of the staff that come down might be on an apprenticeship, and they’re clearly getting the support they want. They’ve always been really professional and able to deliver. We work on something called Coach Core, which is around sport and physical activity apprenticeships, so to see that says a lot about the company. In a way, it summarises our experience with Ingenio: the care and attention that’s taken with that young person epitomises what the company’s about, and that aligns with where we’re at as Active Sussex.

Everyone’s obviously got their own skill set. The team were great with the onboarding, that initial help and having that customer focus, and really fantastic with the installation and the security side of things. You can see they really care about what they’re doing. We’ve been very impressed.