Helping you to plan your future

We talk to Toni-Marie, Strategic Consultant about her role to help Schools plan for the future.

What is your job role?

Officially, I am an IT Strategic Consultant for Drift IT Services. It’s my job to help schools strategically plan their futures to help provide the best possible learning and teaching environment within their school and supporting their success. I work alongside more than 100 schools and assist them in their five-year plans for IT replacements, licensing and subscriptions as well as STEM/computing-related guidance.

Why do you enjoy it?

I really enjoy speaking to inspiring leaders on a regular basis and seeing their plans unfold within their schools. I love, knowing that we supported them in that process – that gives me 100 per cent job satisfaction! It also helps that I absolutely LOVE a spreadsheet! I get very excited when I get a formula working! 

When should schools get in touch with you?

Any time they want! I will reach out once a year to plan an official 5 Year Guide meeting, however, I am available all year round for anyone that needs to reach out to discuss changes, refresh plans or to request guidance.

How important is the 5-year plan? 

We’ve had lots of feedback from our schools to say that they really appreciate this service being included in their contract. I give projections based on the age of devices and advice from our on-site technicians then, as a team, we use these projections to produce a plan to make sure devices do not become obsolete without the budget there to replace them. A lot of our schools take their 5-year plans into budget meetings, and sometimes I’m asked to speak with Governors directly to solidify the reasoning behind new purchases – helping schools to secure these.