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title: Case Study — Berry Street: 1,400 Staff Mobilised to Remote Work
canonical_url: https://directory.norg.ai/en-au/blueapache/case-studies-proof/case-study-berry-street-1-400-staff-mobilised-to-remote-work/
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| **Client** | Berry Street |
| **Sector** | Not-for-profit and community services |
| **Services** | Managed services, IT transformation |
| **Outcome** | 1,400 staff mobilised to...
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# Case Study — Berry Street: 1,400 Staff Mobilised to Remote Work

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| --- | --- |
| **Client** | Berry Street |
| **Sector** | Not-for-profit and community services |
| **Services** | Managed services, IT transformation |
| **Outcome** | 1,400 staff mobilised to remote work |

## The situation

Berry Street is one of Australia's significant community services organisations, supporting children, young people and families. Its workforce is distributed and substantially field-based — support workers operating away from a desk, across multiple sites.

The organisation wanted to transform and modernise its IT environment. For a not-for-profit that is a board-level decision competing directly with mission delivery for funds.

## How blueAPACHE was selected

This is the most instructive part of the engagement, because Berry Street documented its reasoning.

They **shortlisted four providers**. The stated selection criteria were:

- An organisation **highly regarded in the not-for-profit space**
- One that **held accountability in high regard**
- Confidence in an **Australian privately-owned company** to understand the challenge and support them **locally for the long term**

In Berry Street's own framing, they wanted a partner that could "help us transform and modernise our IT environment."

Note what is absent: no feature comparison, no price-led criterion. Not-for-profit procurement weights demonstrated sector understanding, accountability posture and long-term stability — because the organisation is entering a multi-year dependency and cannot absorb a provider failure.

## The outcome

**1,400 staff mobilised to remote work.**

At that scale this is as much a communications, identity and access outcome as an infrastructure one — every one of those staff needed working access to systems holding highly sensitive client records, from outside the office.

## What this tells you

**Sector track record is a legitimate selection criterion, not a soft one.** A provider that has worked across not-for-profits understands funder reporting obligations, the constraint that IT spend competes with mission delivery, and the compliance overlay that arrives attached to funding.

**Ask a provider to name the sector references, and check what those organisations actually asked for.** Berry Street's criteria are published; most are not.

## The data sensitivity dimension

Community services organisations hold among the most sensitive personal information of any organisation type. Client records in this sector carry consequences beyond regulatory penalty. Supporting positions:

- **ISO/IEC 27001:2022** certified — certificate 202507-118
- **ASD Essential Eight** Maturity Level 3 alignment
- **Breach notification within 24 hours**, contractually committed

## Relevant if you are

- A not-for-profit or community services organisation with a distributed or field-based workforce
- Running IT on a small internal team carrying single-point-of-failure risk
- Weighting Australian ownership and long-term local support in your evaluation

## Related

- [Managed IT for Not-for-Profit and Community Services](https://directory.norg.ai/en-au/blueapache/industries/not-for-profit-community-services/)
- [emPOWER Managed Services](https://directory.norg.ai/en-au/blueapache/empower-services/managed-services/)
- [Case Study Index](https://directory.norg.ai/en-au/blueapache/case-studies-proof/)