The Nottingham case study
THE COMPANY
Nottingham Building Society (The Nottingham) is a leading UK building society providing a range of competitive savings and mortgage products as well as a broader selection of other products such as estate agency services, home insurance and pensions advice. The Nottingham is headquartered in Nottingham with branch network spread across Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire.
The Society is an independent organisation aiming to be the number one mutual in the heartland it serves as well as further afield in the UK. The Nottingham is noted for its high level of customer service with its primary aim of helping its customers achieve their financial ambitions.
The Nottingham has always been, and remains a prudent lender protecting and balancing the interests of both borrowers and savers. The quality of its capital remains high and it has continued to build its capital reserves, ensuring that its level of Tier 1 capital is now amongst the strongest in the industry. 2009 was a difficult year both here in the UK and across the world. The Nottingham weathered this difficult period, traded profitably, did not require any support from the taxpayer or government and was one of only two Moody's rated societies to maintain its credit rating of A3 throughout the year.
THE CUSTOMER'S CHALLENGE
The Network Collective engaged with The Nottingham when it was approaching the end of its WAN contract with another provider. Under this contract, that provider delivered fully managed WAN and LAN services to all of The Nottingham's locations. The Nottingham was keen to review the offer and to decide whether it should go to Request for Proposal (RFP). From engaging with The Network Collective at this point, it was clear that The Nottingham could generate better value overall from a Managed Procurement.
THE NETWORK COLLECTIVE APPROACH
The Network Collective's Baseline service delivered a full review of the installed WAN and identified significant commercial and technical areas where improvements were required. Through this process The Network Collective was able to deliver clear and current market insight into The Nottingham’s future network strategy, which plainly showed the optimal route forwards for The Nottingham.
The Nottingham then engaged The Network Collective to manage the procurement process to realise the benefits identified from the analysis. This process included The Network Collective supporting a review of the existing design, in collaboration with The Nottingham. This resulted in a detailed RFP, which engaged four vendors into a managed procurement process, which The Network Collective led throughout. The outcome of the procurement process was The Nottingham entering into a contract with Virgin Media Business for a new WAN that delivered significant commercial, operational and technical benefits, thus accomplishing all of The Nottingham's objectives.
The Nottingham solution was fully implemented in a six month window, with no disruption to branch or head office operations. The solution provides a minimum of 400% increase in bandwidth at all branch locations, with built in flexibility for future growth, enhanced management and a 23% saving against the previous WAN cost including cost of change.
THE CUSTOMER'S VIEW
"TNC allowed The Nottingham to make an informed decision on the best WAN partner and delivered a great Return on Investment for us."
Jack Cutts, Head of IT
