Skip to content

English Heritage

Wanting to elevate the WiFi offering across their sites, Spark TSL ® and Ensign Communications Ltd delivered a complete WiFi package that showcased the best each team had to offer. With Ensign bringing the connectivity with HP's Aruba Network and Spark TSL ® developing a unique User Experience and its signature Analytics platform, English Heritage is prepared to welcome guests back to their sites.

Stonehenge 720 400
home-background-shape

About English Heritage

Organisation type

Sites of Historical Significance / Tourism 

Size of operation

28 locations

Client since

Wifi 2021, Analytics 2021

Product suites

SPARK® Managed Service 

Customised Guest Access WiFi Portal

SPARK® Analytics

24 / 7 / 365 Service Desk

Operating across a new WiFi network of more than 100 Aruba 500 Series access points

 

EnglishHeritageLogo.svg

What makes English Heritage brilliant?

Medal-icon

English Heritage care for over 400 historic buildings, monuments and sites from world famous prehistoric ruins to Cold War bunkers

World-icon

Through their sites they bring the story of England to life for over ten million people each year

Trophy-icon

The English Heritage assembly is one of the largest visitor attraction businesses in the country; passionately protecting internationally prominent collections spanning six millennia

bournemouth-international-cs

Goals

  • Adopt innovation that pushes English Heritage sites to deliver a premium technology offering
  • Encourage visitors to engage with the English Heritage website, online resources and site-specific wayfinding via the tailored UX
  • Offer a reliable helpdesk and support system, available 24/7/365
  • Improve infrastructure to replicate what most visitors experience at home - without them having to use their data
  • Offer a reliable analytics service that allows English Heritage to collect accurate readings on site capacity and visitor movement to actively deploy staff to help
  • Ensure the rollout was fast and effective so to be ready for an influx of visitors after the lifting of Covid restrictions
bg-shape-1

New partnerships

In January of 2021, WiFi SPARK began a new partnership with Dorset-based network infrastructure experts Ensign Communications and with them Ensign brought the opportunity for a joint venture with English Heritage. The solution needed by English Heritage centred around building on top of the existing Aruba WiFi networks, provided by Ensign, and add a level of value to both the client and their visitors. 

The aim was to work in a phase-by-phase basis. Rolling out the solution incrementally, English Heritage could begin benefiting from the supercharged team innovation in a more immediate time frame. They would then be able to assess the functionality of the solution and build upon what works whilst ensuring it always aligned with English Heritage's goals across their 28 distinct locations. 

A key pain point for English Heritage was the guarantee of quick delivery. With the new partnership between Ensign and WiFi SPARK, a roadmap was created to prioritise stages of implementation and ensure that delivery of the solution began ahead of expectation.

Who is Ensign? 

Specialising in business insights and artificial intelligence, Ensign aids its clients in optimising their business environments. Ensign have over 35 years of experience in the field of network infrastructure business management and retains the same values as WiFi SPARK: placing the client at the heart of their work. 

text-scroller-shape-mob
Ensign are passionate about developing partnerships with the best breed of industry leaders in order to share expertise and add further values for our clients. Ensign recognised a partnership with Spark TSL® would be the perfect fit allowing us to create better venues and experiences for our clients and their customer base.

Stuart Edmondson, Head of Marketing Ensign

text-scroller-background-shape

Our solution

With visitors due to return in April 2021 it was important that any solution was deployed quickly and without teething problems. Having delivered similar solutions across the public sector, within retail, hospitality, healthcare and across the British transport industry, WiFi SPARK was well equipped to roll out its solution to 28 sites by the end of March. 

Building upon the effective WiFi infrastructure from Hewlett-Packard's Aruba networks, Spark TSL®was able to provide a fully branded wireless gateway and User Experience (UX), branded for each site providing roaming across all sites for visitors to access the internet in phase one of the initiative. 

The wireless gateways are just that - gateways to the internet. When arriving at location, guests can connect to the WiFi and are greeted with the branded UX portal through which they can access a variety of site specific or generic English Heritage information. 

The personalised UX uses a Data Click user journey requesting the visitor's name and email. The solution provides a unique opportunity for English Heritage to interact with their visitors and provide paperless access to site-specific information such as maps. 

With the addition of SPARK® Analytics, English Heritage are uniquely able to be constantly fed information to their customer relationship management (CRM) dashboard on the number of visitors present at each site fitted with the solution. Analytics works to accurately measure the key points of interest i.e. where visitors spend most of their time, to inform future planning and the efficient running of the site as well as recognising returning customers and providing demographic data. As the sites re-opened in April, a key focus was on ensuring that social distancing is maintained to reassure visitors and guarantee a Covid safe environment; SPARK® Analytics can aid in this. 

Alongside the solution English Heritage and its visitors have access to a 24 / 7 / 365 UK-based Service Desk to assist with any issues or queries they may have. 

 

English-Heritage-All-Devices

A solution that will greet 
thousands of tourists this year

The core value for English Heritage lies in their ability to create personalised engagements with their visitors through their Aruba Network, presenting valuable demographic-based analytics enabling English Heritage to improve the experience of their visitors. Furthermore, content filtering, analytics and a comprehensive Service Desk allow for an entirely managed service with which English Heritage can grow and expand to accommodate a more extensive package.

And value for Ensign too

For new Partners Ensign, the value in the partnership is visible through the productivity managed by Spark TSL®. With the Spark TSL® team being able to deliver the solution ahead of the March deadline, value was added to their English Heritage deal. Furthermore, the scalability of the solution teamed with the comprehensive management by Spark TSL® means that there is room for further successful opportunities in the future. 

text-scroller-shape-mob
Ensign's corporate tag-line is 'Monetise Your Network' and through our partnership with Spark TSL®, the ability to enable our clients to monetise their networks becomes clearer than ever before. The Spark TSL® platform overlays Ensign's core proposition and foundation solution offering of Wireless Networking seamlessly; providing rich intelligence demographic and behavioural data. Through this, clients can make informed, educated optimisation decisions in order to enhance customer experiences and drive additional revenue streams. Whilst the relationship between Ensign and Spark TSL® is a new one, we strongly believe that this relationship will quickly become the core business model moving forward.

Stuart Edmondson, Head of Marketing Ensign

text-scroller-background-shape

The Future

A key element of the solution was being able to provide it within a small window of time and to look to phases of implementation and growth. Because of this, English Heritage have a variety of plans for their future with Spark TSL® and Ensign. Primary among them is further building upon the data-click User Experience portal to integrate a form of marketing data capture; this will allow the engagement between English Heritage and their visitors to be nurtured which in turn will result in business growth. 

Another plan is to introduce Single-Sign On WiFi access across the sites. A feature that Spark TSL® has successfully deployed across its client base, single sign on will only enrich the strong connection English Heritage have with their returning members by ensuring that when they've connected to the WiFi at one site, they're connected at all sites for the next 365 days. 

Spark TSL®'s goal is always to ensure that its customers are getting the most value possible out of their WiFi. Looking forward, English Heritage can use their WiFi as a tool from which to promote new initiatives such as pushing their app and promoting the endless benefits of membership. Spark TSL® ensures the utilisation of WiFi for the needs of the customer; continuing to innovate to ensure their customers can grow with them.