CASE STUDY

Henderson and Varalla improves IT dramatically with forward planning and four levels of support.

Henderson and Varalla (H&V) is a Melbourne-based tax accountancy firm with 21 staff and more than 11,000 clients. H&V relies heavily on information technology. Yet wasn’t being adequately supported by its third-party IT provider contracted to provide strategy, infrastructure design, network maintenance, application management and help desk support.

Proper management of the predominately Microsoft-based IT environment was vital to routine operations, connecting staff to clients and the ATO and supporting custom MYOB applications.

Challenge: reduce downtime while improving transparency and support levels.

Yet service from the incumbent was slow, expensive and unreliable. Office Manager, Jemell Varalla wanted to move to pro-active network maintenance from a dedicated managed service team (avoiding the quick-fix approach of a hybrid support/managed services team) to reduce downtime and better protect sensitive data. 

“We wanted better service for network reliability and to know what we’d be getting for our money with a guaranteed response times to issues,” she said.

• The internal network was becoming unstable and issues prone.
• Pricing was through the roof for patchy work.
• Whenever someone rang for additional support, the meter would start running and H&V would incur additional costs.

Solution: planning, network stabilisation, systematic maintenance and IT support. 

Emerging IT was engaged to monitor, maintain and support network infrastructure and the entire end-user base under a LANserve Care Plan.

• Services included helpdesk support, disaster backup, ongoing security with the latest patches, hot fixes and anti-virus upgrades.
• The services firm is responsible for keeping internal infrastructure running with agreed response times to incidents and a set amount of level-1 support.

Varalla now relies on Emerging IT for all its IT support. “They keep us informed about storage space capacity, the lifecycle of infrastructure – and let us know when technology needs replacing, or when new innovation can help us do better.”

• Emerging IT handles hardware procurement the configurations of new equipment.
• Designed back-up and disaster recovery processes and policies which they also manage.
• manages security and antivirus updates with monitoring.
• Emerging IT has also been pro-active in developing the self-help skills of staff at H&V, who can now address many incidents internally prior to calling Emerging IT.
• Emerging IT’s help desk is available to provide remote support with a tiered escalation structure and four-level of support from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.
• Issues can be tracked through their full lifecycle through an ITIL-based ticketing system. Costs and work history are also available at anytime.
• Quarterly onsite visits from a qualified technician to ensure network health and peripheral devices are configured and working correctly.
• A record of all services provided is supplied each month to keep H&V informed and in control.

Results: systems are optimised, secure and stable.

“Emerging IT has removed the headaches we had with IT. This means we can focus on what matters to the business,” said Varalla.

She’s impressed by the depth of technical expertise from the HelpDesk who seem capable of managing everything promptly, and tackle the most complex issues with ease. “We get an immediate response to requests, which is great because we can’t afford to be down for a minute. LANServe is a very reliable service.”

Security and storage are mission critical functions for H&V. “As a financial services firm, it would be a huge disaster if we lost data. There is real solace in being able to trust Emerging IT to manage data security and back-ups in a professional and systematic way."

Other benefits of LANserve and Emerging IT

• Systems are optimised, secure and stable thanks to proactive monitoring and scheduled preventative maintenance.
• No hidden costs with all work listed on the invoice and costs linked to actual tasks completed.
• Flat-rate expenditure for predictable monthly payments to aid cash-floe planning.
• The extra level of service you get with managed services without lock-in contracts.
• Emerging IT’s ability to monitor and maintain unique custom line-of-business applications for peak performance.
• Strategic guidance that builds H&V’s capacity to implement technology that supports business objectives, from mobility through to integration with ATO systems.

Varalla said that at the end of the day it all boils down to customer service. “We are getting that in spades from Emerging IT. This in turn helps us to provide a much better level of service to our customers.”