Case Study for Samaritans

Samaritans is a 50-year-old charity with 17,600 volunteers in 203 branches throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland. Central office, from which the organisation is co-ordinated, has a paid staff of fewer than 80 people. Samaritans is available 24-hours-a-day to provide confidential emotional support to people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, helping thousands of people each year.

The Problem

Communication, maintenance of standards and co-ordination of activities are all key challenges for the organisation, especially since volunteers span a wide range of geography, ages, backgrounds, skills and experience. Samaritans realised it needed a much better and substantially more cost-effective means of co-ordinating and disseminating information to all their dedicated staff and volunteers.

Lynn Buchanan, New Media Manager at Samaritans and the project lead for the intranet implementation, explained: "Administrative information was held in Word documents, internal databases and on our website, meaning that data had to be maintained in many areas that we had to remember to update each time something changed!" This was both time consuming and also created multiple opportunities for error.

The Solution

Working with iDynamics, it was decided that going online with a highly functional intranet application would address these needs. Using the Activedition standard content management system, Samaritans could implement a solution much faster and more cost-effectively than developing an application from scratch.

Out of the box, Activedition gave Samaritans a secure framework for managing all its internal online content and its appearance as well as additional functionality such as mailing groups, newsgroups, an FAQ section, powerful content search functions and integrated usage statistics and reporting. Activedition allows Samaritans to update the content of their internal web pages themselves, but within the constraints of the pre-defined templates. The powerful search feature allows users of the site to find information on any topic quickly and easily.

As part of the project, iDynamics host the website and have worked closely with Samaritans to extend the standard functionality by developing an integrated electronic People Directory especially for them. This is a core central information store for basic contact and other details on individuals involved with Samaritans organisation. Previously, this was a printed publication which consumed substantial time, effort and money to produce and distribute.

Using a standard product to meet the bulk of the requirements together with some selective development to tailor the system to their specific needs, proved a powerful combination for Samaritans. Using a content management system will help to ensure that ongoing costs are minimised whilst, at the same time, keeping the site fresh, current and relevant.

From the date of order, iDynamics responded quickly to Samaritans requirements to provide the initial site structure and design for approval. Then the standard two-day training course was all the Samaritans team found they needed both to understand simple content administration and realise the many other ways in which they could utilise the site to help the organisation more in the future.

The Benefits

"Consolidating all core information has eliminated the inefficiency and ensure that it can be searched, sorted, edited and categorised as required", continued Lynn Buchanan. "For the first time, Samaritans has a single shared area through which to communicate and our 203 branches are all linked electronically. It is revolutionising the way we work here and a reduction in monthly paper-based branch mailing will reduce costs by £1300 per mailing."

She concluded: "It was a pleasure working with iDynamics and I look forward to working with them again as we extend our use of technology going forward."

^ Top