Raffingers are a top 100 firm of accountants and business advisers, serving companies across the UK in recruitment, property, construction, and technology.
Challenge
As an innovative practice on a path to modernising and making better use of technology, Raffingers were looking to get rid of legacy hardware and centralise themselves around a cloud solution. They had physical servers onsite which were aging and clunky, and were in need of updating their security strategy to have stronger and more rigid policies in place.
There was limited awareness of the importance of security across the firm, and they were looking for a culture change around security so that people would take it more seriously and be more vigilant.
Their pervious IT support provider didn’t understand the cloud capabilities they required, due to accountants having multiple and complex applications and systems. Raffingers needed more expertise in the accountancy space and technology experts that had a deep understanding of the cloud.
Overall, the firm were looking to modernise and gain a better understanding of what they needed to mature on their IT journey.
Solution
T-Tech presented Raffingers with a maturity plan, to give them an idea of the direction of the business, and how it could mature with the right IT. We proposed to provide them with third-line support – this being a more complex and expert team that would be able to deal with all their current accountancy applications like Virtual Cabinet and Iris and provide a more consultative approach to how daily operations could improve.
We carried out a five-day infrastructure review where the T-Tech professional services team went onsite to review their current state and to speak to stakeholders about how it works today and ultimately how they would like it to work. The findings allowed us to design a full cloud environment, which then led to the implementation of an Azure solution. The proposal to move Raffingers to Azure (and AVD – Azure Virtual Desktop) came hand in hand with Mobile Device Management (MDM). This would allow users to work anywhere, on any device, and ensure their data is secured.
As part of the proposal, we also ensured that once the design and existing hardware were removed, Ladybird would come in and conduct a full wire tidy across the cabinets. With this, they supplied and installed a new cabinet.
Outcome
We worked closely with Raffingers in the design and execution of the project, and we took them on the journey with us. The project was a success and their decision making team were really pleased with the outcomes. Raffingers are fully operating within Azure now, and have been reaping the benefits that come along with that.
MDM training was delivered to key stakeholders, which would then drive training amongst other users.
Lee Manning, Partner at Raffingers commented:
“We were apprehensive to embark on such a large project to move all our servers to Azure, but we had no issues due to the extensive planning and great support we had from the T-Tech team.
We now have the benefit of truly being able to work from any device with no risk to our servers as they are not on site. Our security has now improved, and the systems are a lot more stable which is needed with over 100 users working from all over the world.”