The Client
The client is a full service accounting and consulting firm dedicated to helping businesses and individuals manage their financial resources. They provide not only the traditional assurance and tax services, but also numerous specialized services to help their customers tomanage their business and personal finances more efficiently and effectively. They offer a full-range of services to assist a customer’s every need nationally and internationally. The client has 30 employees in several locations around the country.
The Challenge
As the company started rapidly growing, such concerns as disaster preparedness, ability to remotely access the applications and increasing costs for desktop upgrades, started arising. Having 3 servers on premises, the client was not sure how fast they could back up and recover their data in case of a disaster. When the management decided to make a strategic move to leverage the cloud to reduce costs and also to increase flexibility and competitiveness, the employees were reluctant to accept the change and having to learn the new technology and started emphasizing the security concerns they had.
The Solution
StratusPointIT expert consultants worked with the client to lay out a cloud strategy that made sense for their business and that made the employees comfortable with using the new technology. StratusPointIT took client’s internal operations – servers, file storage, and internal applications such as Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, Peachtree and moved it to the cloud. This allowed client’s customers to log in to the Quickbooks so they can view and work on the same Quickbooks files at the same time. The client’s business became accessible everywhere, which means their data is safely accessed anytime and is backed up in the cloud with SSL 256-bit encryption. StratusPointIT datacenter is SAS70 Type II certified and compliant with SOX. The cloud offers a level of security often unmatched by firms that store data in-house. As the client was very committed to moving to the cloud, the transition went smoothly and very fast.
The Results
The client has experienced great payoffs since moving their internal operations to the cloud. Now, the employees can work more efficiently on site and remotely and can better manage their time, with clients from around the country. Staff is able to securely access data and documents 24/7 from anywhere. Their customers have anytime-anywhere access to their information via secure, convenient portals. The data security is improved by eliminating document exchange via email. The accounting needs are met in real-time as opposed to working with backed up files. Client doesn’t have to worry about upgrading servers and operating systems, and has instituted a BYOD (bring your own device to work) policy so employees can now use their own laptops and iPads at work. With implementation of the new cloud technology the client is ready to grow while making their customers more satisfied and successful.
