Leading accountancy and business advisory practice, PKF O’Connor Leddy & Holmes has outsourced its IT function to MJ Flood Technology. This virtual IT team now provides the company with all of its IT support within the iManage framework of a three-year managed service.
PKF can continue to grow and serve its client base without worrying about the IT infrastructure which supports those efforts, thanks to iManage, a three-year managed service from MJ Flood Technology. The company’s professional services team take full responsibility for PKF’s IT infrastructure and its state-of-the-art network operations centre provides the remote diagnostics, alerting, alarms and appropriate remote resolution to ensure that PKF’s IT operations run without interruption.
Like most businesses, PKF relies on certain mission-critical applications to run its business as Mark Tully, partner with PKF explains. “We mightn’t do much business online but we do a huge amount of communications online,” he says. “IT is vital. It’s like turning on the light.”Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, PKF has experienced many economic cycles since inception. The company has a broad range of customers, representing a cross section of Irish industry including manufacturing, retail, wholesale, architects and engineering firms. It attributes its long-standing success to “hard work and client servicing” according to Tully and that means concentrating on its core business.
We look after the SME industry,” explains Tully. “We have a niche and we look after it. It’s all about client retention and dealing with the people that matter; keeping them in the loop; keeping them informed,” he adds.
Taking Care of Business
To enable the company to focus on its core services, PKF took the decision to outsource the management of its IT infrastructure and helpdesk services to a third party. MJ Flood Technology was chosen to provide the service.
MJ Flood Technology’s iManage service comprises a software toolset that permanently resides on PKF’s IT infrastructure. It encompasses servers, desktops, laptops, printers and UPS devices. If a component reaches a specified threshold, i.e. memory, disk storage, CPU, an alert is sent to the iManage network operations centre, warning of the state of the component. The iManage team can take preventive action before the component reaches a critical state. iManage is the ultimate insurance policy for us. We know that no matter how critical our problem is, somebody in MJ Flood Technology has the expertise and knowledge to fix it.”
Mark Tully, partner with PKF.
“Our service is based on a proactive approach,” explains Gareth Madden, sales director with MJ Flood Technology. “In addition to proactive monitoring of hardware, we also ensure that the most up-to-date software and security patches are remotely installed, at least once a month. This gives the customer total peace of mind and fulfils important regulatory requirements for specific industry sectors. Where there is a requirement for scheduled maintenance, we will agree this at a time that will avoid disruption to the customer’s business operations,” he adds.
Where issues cannot be resolved remotely, engineers are despatched to site within the parameters set down by the service level agreement. “We often have a scenario where customers are pleasantly surprised by a visit from one of our engineers. They don’t even realise that there is a problem with their infrastructure,” Madden adds.
PKF runs a number of mission-critical applications which support the business. The company’s office costing package is provided by Sage. Coretime is used for all the company’s internal accounts production and Vistopia is used to prepare client accounts.
As part of iManage, PKF receive monthly reports, detailing the overall health of the network and associated devices as well as a detailed breakdown of the number of devices managed, patches installed and alerts and alarms that have been dealt with. Tully admits that he doesn’t read the reports – he doesn’t have to as he knows from network uptime that the service is doing what it is supposed to be doing. “I know the product I bought – I bought an 8.30am to 5.30pm, 5 days a week, 4 hour response time,” he says. “We know that no matter how critical our problem is, the team at MJ Flood Technology have the expertise and knowledge to fix it.”
iManage is the ultimate insurance policy for us,” says Tully. “If anything goes wrong, we have a direct line to you and all of your resources are engaged to fix our problems. Even when we had problems here with the software from our external providers, you came in and sorted it out for us,” he adds.
Leading accountancy and business advisory practice, PKF O’Connor Leddy & Holmes has outsourced its IT function to MJ Flood Technology. This virtual IT team now provides the company with all of its IT support within the iManage framework of a three-year managed service.
PKF can continue to grow and serve its client base without worrying about the IT infrastructure which supports those efforts, thanks to iManage, a three-year managed service from MJ Flood Technology. The company’s professional services team take full responsibility for PKF’s IT infrastructure and its state-of-the-art network operations centre provides the remote diagnostics, alerting, alarms and appropriate remote resolution to ensure that PKF’s IT operations run without interruption.
Like most businesses, PKF relies on certain mission-critical applications to run its business as Mark Tully, partner with PKF explains. “We mightn’t do much business online but we do a huge amount of communications online,” he says. “IT is vital. It’s like turning on the light.”Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, PKF has experienced many economic cycles since inception. The company has a broad range of customers, representing a cross section of Irish industry including manufacturing, retail, wholesale, architects and engineering firms. It attributes its long-standing success to “hard work and client servicing” according to Tully and that means concentrating on its core business.
We look after the SME industry,” explains Tully. “We have a niche and we look after it. It’s all about client retention and dealing with the people that matter; keeping them in the loop; keeping them informed,” he adds.
Taking Care of Business
To enable the company to focus on its core services, PKF took the decision to outsource the management of its IT infrastructure and helpdesk services to a third party. MJ Flood Technology was chosen to provide the service.
MJ Flood Technology’s iManage service comprises a software toolset that permanently resides on PKF’s IT infrastructure. It encompasses servers, desktops, laptops, printers and UPS devices. If a component reaches a specified threshold, i.e. memory, disk storage, CPU, an alert is sent to the iManage network operations centre, warning of the state of the component. The iManage team can take preventive action before the component reaches a critical state. iManage is the ultimate insurance policy for us. We know that no matter how critical our problem is, somebody in MJ Flood Technology has the expertise and knowledge to fix it.”
Mark Tully, partner with PKF.
“Our service is based on a proactive approach,” explains Gareth Madden, sales director with MJ Flood Technology. “In addition to proactive monitoring of hardware, we also ensure that the most up-to-date software and security patches are remotely installed, at least once a month. This gives the customer total peace of mind and fulfils important regulatory requirements for specific industry sectors. Where there is a requirement for scheduled maintenance, we will agree this at a time that will avoid disruption to the customer’s business operations,” he adds.
Where issues cannot be resolved remotely, engineers are despatched to site within the parameters set down by the service level agreement. “We often have a scenario where customers are pleasantly surprised by a visit from one of our engineers. They don’t even realise that there is a problem with their infrastructure,” Madden adds.
PKF runs a number of mission-critical applications which support the business. The company’s office costing package is provided by Sage. Coretime is used for all the company’s internal accounts production and Vistopia is used to prepare client accounts.
As part of iManage, PKF receive monthly reports, detailing the overall health of the network and associated devices as well as a detailed breakdown of the number of devices managed, patches installed and alerts and alarms that have been dealt with. Tully admits that he doesn’t read the reports – he doesn’t have to as he knows from network uptime that the service is doing what it is supposed to be doing. “I know the product I bought – I bought an 8.30am to 5.30pm, 5 days a week, 4 hour response time,” he says. “We know that no matter how critical our problem is, the team at MJ Flood Technology have the expertise and knowledge to fix it.”
iManage is the ultimate insurance policy for us,” says Tully. “If anything goes wrong, we have a direct line to you and all of your resources are engaged to fix our problems. Even when we had problems here with the software from our external providers, you came in and sorted it out for us,” he adds.
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