Ayo & Bunmi's Story: How Fortress Care Built A Full IT Function Without A £20,000 In-House Hire, With labdesk's Microsoft 365 Accelerator

Fortress Care is a care provider trusted by Manchester City Council, the NHS and local authorities across Greater Manchester. CQC-rated Good, and celebrated at the House of Lords. 

AT-A-GLANCE

• Industry: Health and Social Care

• Scale (Size): SME
• Legacy Replacements: In-house IT management transition to the fully managed labdesk 365 Accelerator + Microsoft 365 migration + SharePoint workspace + cyber awareness training
• Primary ROI: "What's really brought a peace of mind is knowing you have a dedicated partner that you can always call on" — Ayobami (Ayo)  Jatto, Director and Nominated Individual, Fortress Care

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PARTNER JOURNEY

• The Challenge: A growing care provider running Microsoft 365 and its wider IT alongside the day job, as commissioner expectations around IT standards continued to rise.
• The Solution: labdesk audited the environment and deployed the fully managed 365 Accelerator, moving Fortress onto a secured Microsoft 365 platform built around SharePoint.
• The Result: Fortress gained a full IT function without the in-house hire it had been heading towards, and now answers commissioner questions on patching directly from policy.

INTRODUCTION

Fortress Care looks after adults with complex needs across Greater Manchester, including people living with dementia, learning disabilities, and mental health conditions. They are an awarded supplier on Manchester City Council's Supported Living and Day Opportunities framework, listed by the NHS as a Manchester provider, and their sustainability work has been celebrated at the House of Lords.

"One of my friends said, in Warrington I've got this guy, he's very great. I spoke to Mike and Mike came down. Brilliant guys and presentation. It made a very good first impression."

AYOBAMI (AYO) JATTO,

DIRECTOR AND NOMINATED INDIVIDUAL, FORTRESS CARE

As directors Ayobami (Ayo) Jatto and Olubunmi (Bunmi) Jatto grew Fortress across more authorities and more placements, the systems behind the service needed to keep pace 

CHALLENGES

As Fortress grew, the leadership team set out what they wanted their technology to do next:

• A single place to work from: The team coordinated across separate systems rather than one central workspace.
• Documents inside the workflow: Files and templates lived in Dropbox, apart from the tools the team used daily.
• Technology decisions made with expertise: Ayo, Bunmi and the leadership team were forming IT judgements alongside running a regulated care service. 
  
• Answers ready for commissioners: Public-sector contracts increasingly ask providers how regularly systems are patched, and Fortress wanted to answer efficiently from a managed, documented policy.

CONSEQUENCES

Without a change, Fortress faced several risks:

• Leadership time absorbed by technology rather than care delivery and growth
• Cost of an in-house IT hire the business did not yet need full-time
• A team working around their systems rather than through them
• Commissioner questions on IT standards answered case by case rather than from policy

Ayo had already worked out what the second of those would cost. The part-time IT role Fortress was heading towards came to a minimum of twenty hours a week, or around £20,000 a year once pension and employer National Insurance were counted.

SOLUTIONS

Enter labdesk. Fortress came through a personal recommendation, at the same time as the business was renovating and moving into a new office.

Fortress leveraged labdesk to:

• Audit Microsoft 365, IT, and security before recommending anything, through consultations and interviews with the team
• Migrate the business fully onto Microsoft 365 under labdesk's M365 Accelerator
• Build SharePoint into a single workspace for documents and templates
• Secure the cloud environment with proactive maintenance and management
• Protect critical user and business data with backup and recovery
• Train the whole team through a cyber awareness programme
• Equip the team with new laptops, set up, and ready to work
• Improve HR processes and internal communication around the new workspace

THE RESULTS

• Removed the need for the part-time in-house IT hire Fortress had been heading towards, estimated at around £20,000 a year
• Aligned patching with the 14-day cadence Fortress's council commissioners expect
• Migrated the business with no disruption to service
• Moved Copilot from the basic to the professional tier, and into the team's day-to-day processes
• Extended secure access to the team wherever they work, including a colleague based in Europe

• Ayo found labdesk's patching policy especially helpful, enabling same-day vulnerability patching for Fortress against a 14-day government standard.

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• "Going through labdesk's policy, I could see 14 days there, and that was exactly what the council was expecting. There was a lot of alignment there. Not only has it helped with integration, it also helps us with future contracts."

  AYOBAMI (AYO) JATTO,

  DIRECTOR AND NOMINATED INDIVIDUAL, FORTRESS CARE

   

• For a care service like Fortress's that cannot pause, the transition without downtime mattered as much as the outcome.

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• "We knew exactly what was happening and when it was happening. When they migrated our data, when they were changing over our emails, everything was communicated very well. There was no disruption to our service. Nothing, nothing, nothing changed."

  OLUBUNMI (BUNMI) JATTO,

  DIRECTOR, REGISTERED MANAGER AND PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT, FORTRESS CARE

   

Get Started

• See what the labdesk 365 Accelerator looks like on a 30-minute demo:

  • Stop managing IT between other jobs — a dedicated team you can call by name.
  • Answer commissioner questions from policy — patching, backups and security, documented.
  • Get more from the licences you already pay for — before anyone sells you another one.

   

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