Higher productivity and better collaboration among employees. That’s what GGD Zeeland needed. In addition, the IT environment was outdated, putting pressure on manageability and security. PQR provided the modern IT infrastructure and workplace environment that allowed GGD Zeeland to work faster, safer, and respond flexibly to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Productivity and collaboration
Arnoud Koning is technical manager ICT and Information Security Officer at GGD Zeeland. With his team, he is responsible for the delivery and support of IT to more than 350 employees working across Zeeland. “Given the scope of the project, we had to issue a European tender. The primary focus was on our need for higher productivity. Our employees needed to be able to work together more easily. For example, the organization explicitly asked for the ability to collaborate on Office documents. In addition to these functional wishes and requirements, issues such as privacy and security are essential to us, since as a GGD we process a lot of privacy-sensitive data.” Thus Arnoud Koning.
Workplace not an end but means
In the offer, PQR has optimally connected to the requirements and wishes of both the organization and the various types of employees, in order to best support them in the primary work process. The guiding principle here was: the workplace is a means, not an end in itself. Arnoud Koning: “Based on this proposal, we chose PQR, who then developed a modern workplace in Azure for us.The guiding principle here was: the workplace is a means, not an end in itself. We quickly began our cloud transition with the phasing out of a number of on-premises applications and the implementation of SaaS solutions. This is a fundamental building block of our new future-proof infrastructure that keeps us “in control.” PQR also provides security for the workstations, servers and network.”
“Through a portal with single sign-on, employees can easily, quickly and securely access all the applications they need.”
– Arnoud Koning, GGD Zeeland
Teams and SharePoint
“Through a portal with single sign-on, employees can easily, quickly and securely access all the applications they need. We started using Teams for digital meetings, which is a big improvement: in the old situation, we couldn’t even video call. We also migrated the files from our old file server to SharePoint, which runs as a base under our intranet. The way PQR set up our environment allowed us to continue using our existing intranet but still enjoy the benefits of SharePoint. We immediately saw the benefits of the new environment in our home workers who became much more productive.”
Scaling up during COVID-19
PQR and GGD Zeeland were in the process of rolling out the Dynamic Workspace when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in full force. New testing and vaccination lines had to be quickly established at various locations, including the necessary IT. Staffing levels also increased significantly: for the COVID organization, about 200 additional people were added in a short period of time.
Arnoud Koning: “The ability to quickly upgrade workstations and supporting applications was essential and the realized modern workplace in combination with a flexible hybrid cloud solution matched this seamlessly. It was very nice to be able to use our new environment immediately. The tender ran before the pandemic broke out and we did not have to adjust the design during the crisis. So PQR created a very good plan that we could use and benefit from right away. That helped us tremendously, because this would have been a big challenge with our old environment.”
The benefits for GGD Zeeland
The new environment results in higher productivity for employees and greater efficiency for the IT department. Arnoud Koning: “This environment brings our teams and employees closer together. It is a place to collaborate and share information. Individual productivity also increased. We used to work with Thin Clients in combination with Citrix, which was no longer flexible and mobile enough for us. Nowadays, every employee gets a laptop with Office applications, which allows them to easily work at any location.”
Rapid rollout of new devices
The new environment also offers great benefits for the IT department. Software purchased from the cloud no longer needs to be managed in-house. The tooling provided by PQR helps to assign permissions for employees, as well as to roll out software and updates. The actual rollout of new devices is done with Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopilot. Arnoud Koning: “This works incredibly quickly and efficiently: we can easily roll out 20 or more new devices per week, which are then 100% based on our new workplace. What also helps tremendously with this is the incredible scalability of Azure; we can simply immediately scale up where we need to, including the necessary licenses. Whatever we need: it’s available almost instantly.”
“I didn’t know PQR before the European tender, which was quite exciting for us. After the selection we met and the cooperation was immediately very pleasant. (…) If we had known that in advance I don’t think we would have worried so much.”
Collaboration immediately pleasant
Arnoud Koning: “I didn’t know PQR before the European tender, which was quite exciting for us. After the selection we met and the cooperation was immediately very pleasant. The discussions went well and the implementation with the project teams went very smoothly and collegially. If we had known that in advance I don’t think we would have worried so much. PQR is really a very accessible, open, fun party to work with.”
Experience with the Dynamic Workspace has also been very positive. Arnoud Koning: “No longer working with Thin Clients is really fantastic. We now work with laptops which offers much more flexibility, performance and stability. The number of first-line incidents around workplaces has also decreased tremendously. This is also due to its simplicity: users have a browser in which they can choose their applications and work with them. Users are happy with that as well.”
What’s next?
GGD Zeeland and PQR are currently looking at opportunities to further optimize the new environment together. Arnoud Koning and his team are working closely with PQR Service Management to explore where functionality can be added or costs further reduced.
Arnoud Koning: “For example, we are looking at the possibilities of replacing servers with cloud services. But there are also many innovations coming our way from Microsoft, such as smart add-ons for Teams. It is difficult for us to keep up with all these new developments, so for that we gladly rely on PQR. Across the board, we are looking for opportunities to outsource day-to-day things so that we have more focus on the core. A good example: we just started rolling out multifactor authentication. A PQR consultant then sets that up for us in a short time. This is how we use PQR’s expertise to quickly realize things for us. We have the ideas, and PQR implements it the way we want – or even better.”
