CUSTOMER STORY

The Natural History Museum makes a major breakthrough in administering clients — lowering costs and improving productivity with Dell Technologies PC as a Service (PCaaS).**

The Natural History Museum wanted to modernise the way it managed refresh cycles for its 1,400 client devices. Many were ageing and costs were increasing. By adopting Dell Technologies PC as a Service (PCaaS), the museum transformed processes, simplifying lifecycle management and optimising expenses whilst aligning IT disposal with sustainability goals.

• Protected cash flow liquidity with flexible payments
• Reduced management costs by one redeployed FTE
• Improved staff productivity with support tickets down 75%
• Simplified lifecycle management, including asset recovery
• Freed up time for strategic IT tasks
• Helped align IT with museum’s sustainability strategy

It’s no wonder The Natural History Museum in London is one of the top 10 museums in the world. Take a tour of the exhibitions inside its iconic building and you’ll feel the awe that’s inspired millions of visitors since its opening in 1881.

The museum has some 80 million specimens covering botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. Even though many of them are on display, a sizeable proportion remain out of sight, supporting the museum’s earth and life sciences studies. Driving those endeavours are teams of researchers, scientists, students and interns who rely on a mix of desktops, laptops and high-powered workstations to make their breakthroughs.

Over time, it became increasingly challenging for the museum to manage the range of devices in an effective way. Many of the machines were ageing and becoming unreliable, requiring significant upfront investment. The number of help desk tickets were continually increasing, leaving the IT team with even less time to work with third parties on the disposal of old devices in line with the museum’s sustainability goals. Richard Hinton, head of technology solutions and enterprise architecture planning, was clear on the changes he wanted to make. “We’d accepted that digital workplace management was taking more and more of our time,” he says. “We had to introduce a greater efficiency into every part of our digital workplace lifecycle.”

The museum has a long-standing relationship with Dell Technologies, which is assisting it with its ongoing digital transformation journey. Dell Technologies is already powering the work of its 350 scientists and has helped developers create apps that bring the natural world to life for children. “We have a great relationship with Dell Technologies,” comments Hinton, “and I felt sure we could find a solution.”

The solution that Dell Technologies put forward was PC as a Service (PCaaS). “We liked the transparency of PCaaS and the flexible payment solutions,” recalls Hinton. Working with Dell Financial Services (DFS), stakeholders could set a monthly payment plan that was right for the museum. Adds Hinton, “I felt that with flexible financing from DFS, PCaaS was a concept I could easily promote to the museum’s leadership team.” Colleague John Melrose, the museum’s IT project manager for end user compute, identified the advantages of PCaaS straight away. “It was all managed – from imaging to unboxing and having someone onsite to help us deploy. Plus ongoing support.” Melrose and his IT colleagues worked with a Dell Technologies Services Delivery Manager to plan a refresh of the museum’s 1,400 devices.

Feedback from personnel was unparalleled for an IT project and came in via social media immediately. “It was all positive, with scientists tweeting to colleagues how great their experience had been. In my 20 years working in IT, I’d never seen such goodwill and praise as we received after the transition to homeworking and receipt of new computers. This was directly enabled by Dell Technologies PCaaS.” says Hinton.

After the rollout, tailoring each device to every user’s individual need increased their productivity. “The productivity boost from Dell Technologies PCaaS was clear by the 75% drop in support calls to the help desk,” says Melrose. What’s more, several members of staff swapped out their old Apple devices for Dell Technologies hardware, preferring the performance and looks of the Dell technology. Hinton says, “We had access to a portfolio of devices that met the requirements of all our work personas.”

The refresh enabled the museum to ramp up its working capabilities with staff having reliable, high-performance laptops to use at home. “We would’ve struggled to support home working if we hadn’t had the Dell Technologies PCaaS refresh,” states Hinton. The security built into the devices also gave the museum peace of mind that the network wasn’t at risk. And the flexibility of ProSupport meant that Dell Technologies would find a way to support the devices regardless of whether employees used them onsite or remotely.

With the support of Dell Technologies Services, the IT team could refocus one full-time equivalent (FTE) from device management and support to more strategic activities. The redeployment of resource was due to PCaaS offering time-saving services. For example, it includes Dell Technologies Asset Recovery, which provides data sanitisation for additional security and peace of mind over the disposal of devices.