The Diocese of Chelmsford

The Diocese of Chelmsford is one of 50 Dioceses in the UK. One of the largest dioceses, Chelmsford covers all of Essex and five East London boroughs - Waltham Forest, Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Newham and Redbridge. With 500 parishes, 618 churches and 139 church schools, the diocese spans some 1,500 square miles.

Originally, there were approximately 10 key members of staff who were issued with mobile telephones. The problem was that they were different phones, on different contracts, operating on different networks which made the administration of the contracts both expensive and time consuming.

Excell were able to provide the Diocese with the specialist contracts they required and support them in such a way that the migration from 10 individual accounts to one account was fairly painless. Andrew Bucknell, the first dedicated IT Officer for the Diocesan office in Chelmsford commented, "Excell gave us help and support in terms of disconnecting the old phones and getting portable authorisation codes [PACs] to migrate. If we had any problems with other networks being difficult and not wanting to release the number, Excell gave us help with that too. We then went through the process of deciding which handset was most suitable for each key worker".

Since moving to the new Excell mobile solution the Diocese estimates it has saved between £50-£100 a month. In addition to the mobile contract, Andrew has recently awarded Excell a contract to provide broadband across nine sites. Part of this programme is to allow remote workers to access the core network. Andrew said, "What I like about Excell is that I can say to them that I have a concept, but am not sure quite what needs to be done to make it work, how can we achieve it? I know they will come back with a number of options on how to bring the concept into being. Excell is energetic, creative and responsive - and for me that is what sets them apart".

To find out more about the mobile solution Excell provided the Diocese of Chelmsford, download the full case study.

For more information about the services and solutions Excell can provide for yours and other markets, visit our dedicated Market pages.

   Download the full PDF here