I have been impressed with your service and with your staff, your engineer just rolled in, had a look around and fixed many of our issues with the minimum of fuss. That is no mean feat. IT services in NFP’s who can’t afford to have in-house support is an area that has been ignored for ages and it is great to see someone taking up the challenge.
Lyn Kwong, Fundraising Manager
About us
appiChar bring over 10 years' experience of implementing and managing IT in the not-for-profit sector with organisations such as Fairtrade, Médecins Sans Frontières, Museum of London, Fundraising Institute of Australia, Royal Association for Deaf People to name a few.
Our core focus has always been on helping organisations to improve the effectiveness of their IT systems. We provide a complete ‘IT management’ service with each of our customers having their own dedicated consultant who acts as their IT manager / director. They are backed up by a highly talented helpdesk who are there to make sure any problems that arise are quickly fixed.
Our recruitment processes allow us to spot talented engineers who are able to communicate with technical people and non-technical people alike – a crucial factor for working successfully in the not-for-profit sector.
History
appiChar was formed in February 2002 by Ian Ryder who had been designing and managing IT systems since 1988 for companies such as BT, Reuters, Transamerica and Forte. After a spell of travelling in 1998 & 1999 Ian decided to work for a smaller organisation and became the Head of IT for Crisis, the UK national charity for single homeless people. It was during this period that the concept for appiChar was born. Since then appiChar UK has grown to have over 25 staff and over 120 customers globally, ranging in size from 3 users to 350 users.
Ethos
We believe in long-term relationships - with our customers, staff and partners. Because of this we rarely lose customers or staff. We always focus on the quality of the services we deliver and believe in letting our customers be our greatest sales force!
We also believe in giving something back to the not-for-profit sector and where possible try and marry up our marketing activities with causes that benefit the sector as a whole. In 2008 we spent over $50,000 on donations and sponsorships for not-for-profit organisations and in 2009 we spent nearer to $70,000 .
Technology
As an IT company we always aim to understand new technologies that are relevant to our customers. We also understand that to keep hold of the best staff we have to give them the opportunities to broaden their experience.
We pride ourselves on being extremely innovative and always looking for new ways to solve old problems.
We have developed our own customer support management systems to ensure that we haven't had to compromise on how we manage and communicate with our customers. An example is our customer feedback system that allows us to find out how every single call is dealt with. We aim to have the best systems in the sector so that we can deliver the best service possible.