National Autistic Society

Founded in 1962, the National Autistic Society is the UK’s leading charity for autistic people and their families. NAS’ goal is to help transform lives, change attitudes and create a society that works for autistic people.

The National Autistic Society has a mobile estate of 1,600 connections which, for historic reasons, were connected via three airtime providers. The charity had felt for some time that this fragmented solution was sub-optimal, both because of the operational complexity, and because they were sure that the pricing had become uncompetitive over the term of the contracts.

For these reasons, the National Autistic Society were keen to undertake a competitive tender process to secure a unified solution for its future mobility services, to select the best-fit service provider to partner with moving forwards, and to drive the maximum possible cost savings. In these challenging times for charitable organisations, the goal of maximising cost savings has become increasingly critical, and this was a key driver for them.

The Network Collective (TNC) is the UK’s leading independent network and telecoms consultancy. As a long-term sponsor of the Charity IT Leaders (CITL) group, TNC has partnered with many of the UK’s major charities to help them achieve their objectives for optimised network and telecoms services.

Working with the National Autistic Society, TNC led the competitive tender process for their new mobility services. The first step of this process was to build a detailed inventory of the charity’s current services, and then engage with key charity stakeholders to define the National Autistic Society’s commercial, technical, operational, and contractual requirements for its future-state services.

Using these inputs, TNC prepared a market-leading RFP against which a number of service providers submitted bids. Over subsequent weeks, TNC and the National Autistic Society worked together to evaluate these bids, and then negotiate improved terms. Ultimately, the charity selected its Preferred Supplier, and TNC led the negotiation of a contract that locks in the full range of benefits secured through the competitive tender process.

Working together, TNC and the National Autistic Society have secured outstanding results:

• A unified solution delivered by a single service provider
• Cost savings in excess of 50%
• Market-leading flexibility and protections within the contract

Key to achieving these successes has been the strong, trusted partnership between the National Autistic Society and TNC. This enabled the joint team to leverage each other’s strengths to drive the best results in the shortest possible timescales. In particular, the charity found TNC’s unparalleled market insight hugely valuable when evaluating the bids, navigating the negotiations, and proving the quality of outcome to the National Autistic Society’s senior management group.

TNC took on a lot of the hard work we would have needed to do to achieve the same significant outcomes, and I know we would not have achieved this result without the involvement of their team and resources.

David Moore, Head of IT, National Autistic Society

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