Avon Fire and Rescue Service is a vital public sector organisation dedicated to protecting lives, property, and the environment to the communities of Bath & Northeast Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire.
Their mission extends beyond responding to emergencies; they actively engage in community safety initiatives, fire prevention programs, and maintaining regulatory compliance.
Avon Fire and Rescue had ambitious digital transformation goals set and a technology path chosen but building a team of experts to help support them proved difficult. Whilst the organisation already had some Power Platform champions in place, they knew they would need more expert guidance to ensure their solutions were built efficiently and securely.
Their attempts to hire Power Platform developers directly were unsuccessful, as candidates lacked the practical experience and technical knowledge required to address the organisation’s needs.
Adding to the challenge, the service faced regulatory deadlines that required projects to be delivered efficiently and within strict timeframes.
With the support of our shared partner, Avon and Netshell engaged on a longer-term relationship to ensure they access to professionals when they needed it. With this partnership in place, Avon had immediate access to a team of consultants, developers, business analysts and quality assurance specialists, enabling them to achieve more within their budget than hiring a single developer could have provided.
Our work with Avon Fire and Rescue Service has been wide-ranging, addressing both smaller-scale needs and larger transformative projects.
With our partnership in place, Avon has not only achieved their immediate objectives but are also strongly positioned for future improvements and innovation. With a range of solutions already in place and internal members of staff confidently undertaking new projects, the service will continue to improve operational efficiency and regulatory compliance for years to come.
Without the assistance of Netshell, our Transformation journey would have stalled. As a Service, we found it increasingly difficult to resource the skill required to assist us in deploying suitable M365 solutions. Netshell have enabled us to accelerate the delivery of digital projects by providing us with the comprehensive support we needed within the Power platform.
Together we’ve implemented a wide range of solutions that focus on automating manual processes and reducing errors. Avon had already made great progress in digitising their paper-based forms using Microsoft Forms, however it was quickly found that this was not reducing the overall number of errors for important information, such as user emails, due to a lack of integration with their organisations Active Directory.
Our relationship goes beyond just development; we have worked closely with Avon’s internal teams to ensure they also have the skills and knowledge required to understand and utilise the Power Platform and its capabilities. Through a combination of tailored workshops and training sessions, we focused on upskilling their staff to ensure they can stay self-sufficient no matter what their plans are for the future.
For more bespoke requirements, we delivered customised solutions that utilised the full Power Platform suite. These projects addressed challenges that citizen developers or standard Power Platform tools and connectors could not. For instance, we developed advanced Power Automate flows and Power Apps to handle complex integrations, enabling the organisation to extend the functionality of their SharePoint intranet beyond the standard interface.
