03 Nov 2023
by Moira Roberts

Cultivating Connections: Networking in the Justice and Emergency Sector

The nature of The Justice and Emergency Services market vertical is that often suppliers work in competition. However, under the terms of reference of JESMC, committee members collaborate to support the justice community as a whole, by sharing insights and facilitating collaboration opportunities or simply sharing best practices.

When deciding on what focus areas should be adopted, during the current tenure, it was agreed that the current committee had found the collaboration extremely valuable, and the idea of setting up a partner and networking event was set up as one working group.

From this we set up a series of ‘speed dating’ sessions.  The event took place in the Tech UK offices in Nov 2022. Approximately 25 organisations took part. It was a good balance between SME and large enterprise. The set up was such that the SME’s moved between large enterprise representatives after a two minute pitch of the services they provided, moving on (in speed dating style) at the end of that two minutes.  Where it was agreed there was mutual benefit, contact details were exchanged and follow up sessions planned.

Feedback was unanimous, it had been a big success.  Several organisations took the conversations further and now have formal collaboration in process and others were able to gain insight into new product development and take these ideas back into their business to shape future ideas. Additionally the idea was rolled out to other market verticals who also ran speed dating events.

Moira Roberts, Cloud Gateway

 

 

Authors

Moira Roberts

Moira Roberts

Head of Blue Light & Justice, Cloud Gateway

I currently lead on Cloud Gateway's Blue Light vertical and my role is to increase the work we do within the Blue Light sector. I'm passionate about ensuring that, as supplier, Cloud Gateway truly understands the challenges the police, in particular, experience and provides network solutions which supports this.  I joined JESMC (this being my first tenure) to raise the profile of how, as responsible suppliers, we need to help the police get the right digital foundation to ensure they are able to take advantage of all the new technical innovations available.