The Client
Morgan Lambert is a specialist gas and electrical safety management consultancy that provides services for social housing providers. The firm carries out audits of gas and electrical installations for social housing properties across the UK. Social landlords have a legal obligation to provide safe housing for tenants and therefore Morgan Lambert provides essential services not only to the housing providers but also the tenants who live in the properties. The consultancy works with over a hundred organisations, inspecting the gas and electrical services for thousands of properties nationwide.
The firm has over 80 staff including field-based consultants and auditors, many of whom work remotely onsite at housing projects to inspect and certify the work of gas and electrical testing carried out by contractors to ensure landlords fulfil their legal duties. Morgan Lambert’s field auditors carry out between 1200-1500 safety inspections per week.
With a change of leadership in 2010, following a management buy-out, Morgan Lambert focused its future as a national organisation dedicated to promoting and raising the standards of essential gas and electrical services in the social housing sector.
The IT Challenge
Orca has been working with Morgan Lambert for more than 16 years and has supported the firm through its expansion to become a nationwide operation. Morgan Lambert’s field auditors need to be mobile, working onsite at properties around the UK and require secure remote access to company information. Orca’s managed IT services provide strategic, business-critical support.
At the head office in Selby, North Yorkshire, the back office team schedule site inspections, liaise with clients using the CRM system and use Sage for financial functions as well as the standard Microsoft Office applications. Secure backup and data storage are vitally important for the firm, and Orca ensures that backups are carried out seamlessly, giving Morgan Lambert the confidence that client records and essential business data are safely maintained.
The IT Solution
As the firm has ambitious growth plans, Orca is advising Morgan Lambert on the next steps for its IT platform and is working with the firm to transition to the cloud. The initial phase in migrating to the cloud has been the adoption of Office 365, with Orca setting up the service and carrying out the data migration. The move to Office 365 was implemented over a weekend to minimise business disruption, as is standard practice for Orca.
“Orca is our longstanding strategic business partner, supporting our IT platform. They understand our business objectives as they have worked with us for many years, supporting us through changes and expansion. They are very responsive to our immediate needs, as well giving us practical, pragmatic consultancy on our future IT roadmap.”
Lee Bradshaw, Managing Director