We spoke to Social Print and Copy CIC’s Director Ian Gray about the benefits of third sector suppliers working together for social good and how GoodCall supported the organisation with their mobile needs. GoodCall set up 5 lines for the team and we had a chat about opportunities for future collaboration and our common goal of getting a fair deal for the charities we support and creating employment opportunities for those furthest from the labour market.
Can you explain a little bit of background to your organisation?
Social Print and Copy CIC are effectively an asset locked social enterprise and we provide copy, printing and document solutions for the third sector. We primarily started down that route because it was severely misrepresented and there was a lot of misselling going on within the sector – we wanted to try and do something about it.
Which later led to a lot of diversity in outcomes and ultimately the delivery back into the social good and the community benefits – the employability of young apprentices between sixteen and twenty-four years old. Our key impact is focussed around two channels, one would be around the educational aspect of training and the other one is our milestones, No Barriers to Work. That’s how we do project-based training for young people who maybe haven’t had the qualifications early on to get into these roles.
How did you first find out about GoodCall and engage with the team?
I met a couple of the GoodCall team at an online third sector forum around August 2020 – and we had some follow-up calls to understand what you guys do as an organisation and what we do, quite a lot of synergy between the social aims and values that we both deal with. We spoke about the point in time where we required our services and vice versa, and that was the initial collaboration we had with each other.
What were your key objectives when approaching GoodCall?
We looked at the synergy between our organisations – we are very keen to work with fellow third sector organisations wherever we can and try to help each other out. We are very strong on the goals and the aims of an organisation and they have to have a match with ourselves when we consider working together. An organisation that can offer fair pricing, competency in what they do and marry up with our innovation and deliver social outcomes.
What was your phone set up like before reaching out to GoodCall?
Most people used their personal phones but we felt the time was right to move over to a better solution to integrate with the technology we are using in the cyber aspect of the development of the business.
We had individual contracts that we used previously, with O2, Vodafone and Sky etcetera, however, when we spoke with yourselves you were able to come up with something competitive for us and the fact that GoodCall could support us to manage the handsets and the accounts for us is something that was of benefit. We have a key contact we can reach out to with any concerns and this management aspect was very important to us.
Why are mobile devices important for your social enterprise and how do they help you deliver your impact?
Massively. We are trying to create and develop a strategy for third sector organisations that sit around business transformation, that move away from paper-based processes to digital. Having mobile and tablet technology gives us the ability to work on the move, it allows us to access the cloud-based systems that we use and these are practices we are trying to promote more widely. To be competent to deliver these into the sector we must be using these on a day-to-day basis. We use them as our standard telephones and our email. For us, it’s all about using technology efficiently with good security measures.
Three of the main team members who are using our devices at the moment are our Head of Office and Finance, Head of Technical and Solutions and our Legal and Contracts staff. As part of the development of our infrastructure, we use dual authentication to sign on to our systems and this has been a major part of our GPDR and compliance needs with regards to cybersecurity within the business as well. It is important to us that we have the safest methods of signing on and signing off with our equipment and our new devices were a critical part of this.
How was getting started with GoodCall and how did you find that process?
GoodCall were very competitive in what they could offer and the cost element was fair as well. It was massively important to us that GoodCall were a social enterprise in choosing to work together. Very much so, the support, the questioning and review to really investigate who we are and what we do. You were very clear; you gave us detailed options which we could look at and review. We were able to take that back and review it and assess it to make sure it met the technical and financial criteria we were looking for.
What was your most positive experience in working with us?
I would say after we took delivery of the equipment, we phased in how we would be bringing our devices online across a couple of weeks. Our colleague was carrying about two mobile phones but the device we had chosen could combine the two. He could put both SIMs into the phone so he could have both his personal communication and business communication within the one device. GoodCall were there to arrange all of that and talk him through the process very clearly.
Now that your contract is in place, how do you feel about the level of aftercare you have received from the team?
Yes, whenever our team members have called up, there has always been a fast and efficient response to it. This has generally been done through email and it’s a great support to come back quickly. Whenever we have asked you have always been there to support us.
Recommendation
“We would certainly be more than happy to recommend GoodCall to other third sector organisations that we work with locally. The experience we had from yourselves was good services, good value and being part of the wider social good family.”
Ian Gray, Director
Social Print and Copy CIC
