The Challenge

Cisco Start

The ChallengeHaving started out as just two young blokes and a second-hand van, Orange Sky now employs more than 20 full-time staff, operates 16 laundry vans, three shower vans and one hybrid van, and has more than 1,000 volunteers around Australia. Together, they wash over 6 tonnes of laundry every week. And from their original suburban garage office, they’ve grown to a multi-storey space in Brisbane with a workshop, data room, storage facility and even a printing lab where they print their own t-shirts.Not surprisingly, this exponential growth introduced some significant technological challenges. They could no longer make do with the cheap, ‘home-made’ network they’d been able to get by with previously. They needed a secure, enterprise-grade networking and data storage infrastructure. They also needed much better communication and collaboration tools.

"We’d tried a number of collaboration and video conferencing tools in the past, but we’ve never found a solution we were happy with. This is mission-critical for us, because the more efficient we are in our office, the more efficient we are out on the road and in the community."

Lucas Patchett, Co-founder, Orange Sky

Of course, general internet connectivity also impacts efficiency, and Orange Sky was struggling there too. “Having slow internet and poor tools for collaboration was hindering our growth, and it was frustrating for everyone,” said Lucas.“For example,” he said, “all our vans need to be internet enabled, so they can send back shift reports containing the names of all volunteers present, their location, the times they operated, all the people who did their washing or had a shower, and so on. This gives us the information we need to manage the operation from head office, and gives our volunteers the structure they need to work efficiently. It’s like a checklist of tasks they need to remember everything, to help both their customers and the next shift. If we have dodgy internet, we can’t do any of this properly.”“It’s not just about the business efficiency, either. As we’ve matured as an organisation, our goals have changed too. We’ve realised that, for people experiencing homelessness, it’s not just about having clean clothes, it’s about being connected. They feel disenfranchised and cut off. "

"So our mission has changed from simply improving the hygiene standards of the homeless to positively connecting people, and our technology plays a critical role in this."

Lucas Patchett, Co-founder, Orange Sky

"Many of the people who use our service have mobile devices, but they usually don’t have SIM cards. If we can give them reliable WiFi in our vans, they can contact their families, access government websites and help services, and just generally stay in touch with the world,” said Lucas.