Glasnevin Trust is a non-profit organisation that operates five cemeteries in Dublin: Dardistown, Glasnevin, Goldenbridge, Newlands Cross and Palmerstown.
Founded by Daniel O’Connell in 1828, the organisation is dedicated to preserving the history and memory of more than 1.5 million people buried in their cemeteries.
Glasnevin Trust’s systems manager Greg Pluymers was the man faced with the monumental task of digitising and preserving these records for future generations.
After developing software and systems in-house to manage this huge amount of data, the Trust is now recognised as a leader in the field.
“We have grown our know-how and our reputation to the point that other cemeteries now come to us to find out how to modernise their operations,” Greg said.
“And not only that, but back in 2014 when the Ebola crisis was at its peak, Concern reached out to us because they needed help managing the number of burials and how to do that as soon as possible to curb the spread of the disease.
“We agreed to help Concern manage all those burials, so we gave them a copy of our software and set it up on virtual servers in Freetown, Sierra Leone and trained them all on the technology.
“We take great pride in being able to help out with that.”
With such a vast amount of data and so many stakeholders requiring access to it, it was vital that the Trust had the most reliable network possible.
“With Magnet Plus we have a 24/7 support line and we know that if there is an issue, they will look after it and get it up and running as quick as possible.
“When we were with a competitor, we found that when something went wrong, you were spending so much time trying to pinpoint the problem, only to end up in a game of ping pong, between ourselves and the customer service. And we just weren’t getting anywhere.
“With Magnet Plus (formerly Magnet Networks) we have a 24/7 support line and we know that if there is an issue, they will look after it and get it up and running as quick as possible.
“And they will do so without getting into this defensive, “Oh this isn’t our fault” mode. We work together. What we have with Magnet is a partnership and that’s what makes a huge difference.
“And that’s great for me, because although we have just short of 100 people, I am the one managing all our locations. So this is where efficient partnerships can make the difference.
“With the Magnet Voice hosted business phone system, we can manage all our connections in the cloud at a single click, which we couldn’t do with the PBX system from the competitor.
“And as well as that, by moving the system over to the cloud, whenever we are opening up a new location, like the Dardistown crematorium which was completed last year, we don’t need to get new telecoms lines in.
“All we had to do was make sure we had an internet connection, then it was just a case of collecting the configured phone from Magnet and plugging it in on any network connection in Dardistown and we were up within minutes, which we would never have been able to do based on traditional hardware-based phone systems.
“To be able to do things as efficient as that, that is what makes the huge difference.”
