To deliver projects and programmes for their public sector clients, Local Partnerships required a secure platform to share a large number of confidential documents.
They felt that their previous file sharing provider was not meeting their requirements. It was expensive, not user friendly and was very difficult to set up.
When their 12-month contract ran out, they were happy to review alternatives and soon decided to choose Kahootz.
Local Partnerships is a joint venture between HM Treasury and the Local Government Association (LGA).
They were formed in 2009 to help the public sector deliver at the local level, supporting the delivery of investment in local infrastructure and services.
Some of the organisations they work with include police forces, government departments, local authorities, fire rescue services and the NHS.
Local Partnerships’ clients share a large number of documents which need to be reviewed in order to help with savings reviews, refinancing, benchmarking and market testing.
This couldn’t be done via email due to firewall restrictions on the size of their files and for security reasons.
Using previous software was a ‘painful experience’
Iva Simunkova, Programme Manager for Local Partnerships, felt that using their previous software was a painful experience for herself, her colleagues and their clients.
It wouldn’t let them upload more than one file at once and whenever they set up a new client on the system, they had to talk them through on the phone how to upload the files and navigate the site.
“We found 4projects was not user friendly, with too many unnecessary and illogical steps to perform the simplest tasks, as well as having many functions we would never use.
“The fact that there wasn’t an option to upload multiple files all at once complicated things even further. This was frustrating for both our clients and us,” Iva explained.
Happy to move over to Kahootz
They required a solution that would make it easy to share large amounts of files quickly, easily and securely. After looking at a number of options including Huddle, Dropbox for Business and even bigger players such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Documents, they decided on Kahootz.
“We were very happy to move over to Kahootz. I don’t receive any negative feedback about the usability of Kahootz compared with our previous provider, when I used to get calls all the time about how to use it.
“The fact that people just login, get on with what they need to do and find content easily themselves says it all,” Iva said.
Security was also an important factor. Kahootz had the necessary security accreditations for sharing sensitive documents with local authorities and unlike Dropbox, email notifications wouldn’t be blocked by their IT systems.
Growing user numbers
Local Partnerships started using Kahootz with 30 users, then upgraded to 100 in November 2016 and have recently upgraded further to 200 users because they are now working with larger programmes.
Most of all, Kahootz is helping to reduce administration, “There is less of a burden on us now – moving and monitoring content has been made much easier.
“Put simply, Kahootz makes it easy for our users to do their job.”
Want a secure platform to share documents easily with your stakeholders? Before procurement, Local Partnerships trialled Kahootz. You can too by starting a FREE, no obligation, 30-day trial.