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The Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulbourn provides a range of community-focused services across education, healthcare, and aged care. When it came time to refresh the technology used by its 600+ workers, their internal IT team realised the job was simply too vast, complex, and time-consuming to be managed effectively in-house. The team at Next Technologies stepped in to help—procuring, deploying, and delivering a fleet of ready-to-go Lenovo devices across NSW and the ACT. We also worked with the internal team to evolve their overall approach to employee onboarding, device deployment, and ongoing IT management with Microsoft Intune.

About Anglican Diocese Services

The Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulbourn is a vast group which spans over 60 church ministries, and includes schools, childcare centres, healthcare organisations and aged care facilities. As many of its services are provided in regional areas, employees rely heavily on their technology to stay connected and deliver quality services to their communities. Anglican Diocese Services (ADS) is the managed services team that sits within the broader organisation, providing a range of IT, finance, and payroll services.  

The challenge

For the team at ADS, managing technology across a large and geographically dispersed organisation was challenging. It simply isn’t feasible for the team to have IT staff at each of its 60 sites – meaning most technology support and maintenance was provided remotely.  

“As an organisation, we are very geographically spread out. Prior to this recent device refresh, our team was spending a lot of time managing dated technology, supporting employees through the onboarding process, or resolving individual device issues. Doing so without workers on the ground was quite slow and difficult,” says Nathan Mares, Technology Consultant and Advisor at ADS.  

“We also lacked robust processes for managing our technology,” he adds. “We had no consistency with our devices or software versions, which meant that our employees often had different experiences. Also, some of our devices were 5-6 years old and needed upgrading.”

Security was another challenge for the organisation. With ageing, disparate devices, it was hard for the ADS team to guarantee the safety of the network and infrastructure – and the team was keen to upgrade the organisation’s devices so they could take advantage of the security benefits of Windows 11 and BitLocker.  

Employee experience was also at risk. With such disparate, ad-hoc IT processes, it was hard to get employees onboarded quickly and effectively and make them feel supported in their roles. 

“We just want to make sure that IT is working and enabling people to do their jobs in the community,” says Nathan. 

ADS engaged the team at Next Technologies to manage a large-scale technology upgrade across their organisation—rolling-out approximately 400 new devices for the education side, and 200 for employees in healthcare.

The solution 

Procuring the new devices was an important first step. Thanks to Next Technologies’ transparent open book pricing, ADS was able to secure a fleet of new, quality Lenovo devices.

“The open book arrangement just makes everything much easier. We came to Next with a requirement for 600 or so devices. Once they understood our needs in detail, they approached a range of manufacturers to see what they could offer, and then presented the options back to us. They helped us mediate all discussions and secure the most optimal pricing,” says Nathan.

Once the devices were procured, they were shipped directly to Next Technologies where they were unboxed, asset-tagged, professionally branded and packaged up, ready to go. Each device was then individually shipped to its final location.

Next Technologies also took care of the asset disposal process for ADS. All employees were provided with a “return sleeve” along with their new device—into which they could put their old device for return to Next Technologies, so it would be securely disposed.

“To do all of this internally would be such a massive amount of work. We simply couldn’t manage the procurement, set-up and roll-out of 600 plus devices from our headquarters, nor manage the asset disposal process at such scale. Next just made everything so easy,” says Nathan.

Another key element of the project involved an enterprise-wide migration to Microsoft Intune. All devices had Intune installed, for a fixed price from Next Technologies for Intune packaged services. 

Intune gives the IT team at ADS centralised control, with the easy ability to push security profiles and updates out to devices. If a device is lost or stolen, they can locate and remotely disable the device with the click of a button. They can also configure remote devices within minutes.

The outcome

The entire process was incredibly smooth and efficient from start to finish.

“The Next team were always responsive, and they always had our best interests in mind. They worked with us as a partner— always on our side of the table,” says Nathan.   

“Staff also love the devices. Because of the transparent pricing model, we were able to secure really good quality, well-specced devices with a flexible form factor, which our people really appreciate,” says Nathan. 

“Our IT team has benefited greatly too. Thanks to Microsoft Intune, we can now set up a device in just a few minutes. This process would have previously taken several hours, if not days.”

“When I first arrived at ADS, employees would often need to wait several days after onboarding for technology to turn up, because it had to be prepared centrally and then dispatched on site. Next has streamlined things in a way that means people don’t have to wait anymore. Our own team now has more capacity for support and other innovations, as time isn’t spent managing assets,” he adds.