Why CWJ chose Legal Digital Workplace specialists Access Managed Services
Clarkson Wright & Jakes is a Kent-based law practice that has been delivering a range of legal services since the business was founded in 1875.
Fast forward 145 years and the 75-employee firm was looking for a new IT provider to take them to the next level. Dissatisfied with their legacy IT partner, and held back by an ageing practice management system (PMS), they turned to us in search of a forward-thinking alternative.
This case study highlights how partnering with us helped them build a high-performing, flexible, and secure Digital Workplace in the cloud, migrate to their new PMS, and stay fully operational throughout the challenges posed by COVID-19.
Business size
Medium
Industry
Legal
Products
Virtual Desktop
IT Service Desk
Microsoft 365
The challenge
Before joining Access Managed Services more than 2 years ago, CWJ was experiencing several fundamental challenges with its IT infrastructure and providers.
Their existing on-premise solution didn’t provide the platform they needed to develop a modern IT function - it made remote working more challenging and restricted their ability to migrate from their PMS, Envision.
As Envision was nearing end-of-life, the level of support available was gradually decreasing over time, potentially leaving CWJ vulnerable to emerging security threats that could target the valuable and sensitive information its users deal with day-to-day.
But most fundamental to the challenges CWJ was experiencing, was their IT support provider. Although based locally, CWJ’s experience with their legacy partner was far from close-working.
The non-specialist provider was a poor cultural fit with CWJ, leading to hesitance from members of staff to contact the help desk - overwhelming internal IT resources as a result. Being a large-scale support company, the team at CWJ also found it difficult to escalate issues to senior people when they needed to, leaving them feeling frustrated when key decisions needed to be made quickly.
The solution
After a lengthy tender process, CWJ joined forces with us in January 2019. The first task was to rebuild their IT infrastructure from scratch, providing them with a more secure, high-performing, and cloud-based foundation on which to host SOS, their new practice management system.
Our technical team worked on-site through the two-week implementation stage to iron out any issues and ensure the Digital Workplace was seamlessly launched. And then, one year later, helped them implement the new practice management system that was so critical to their operations.
After the initial launch, the team at CWJ was able to access our specialist legal IT support desk - who have extensive experience dealing with all major legal applications. This was critical to CWJ, particularly after the launch of SOS.
We had a senior member of the Access Managed Services team dedicated to CWJ, and having that single point of contact at the start of the pandemic was really helpful. We now have everyone who needs to work from home doing so, and it’s worked out very well.
The benefits
The move to the our Digital Workplace has given CWJ a solid platform on which to operate effectively, and especially so through the challenges posed by COVID-19.
CWJ has been able to adopt remote working with ease and has leveraged our Managed Services expertise to bring in multi-factor authentication for users so that sensitive legal documents can’t be accessed by malicious actors. This has come in conjunction with cyber awareness training, where our team is helping bring CWJ’s workforce up to speed on how to work safely from home.
Speaking about the partnership, and Access Managed Services' support at the outbreak of the pandemic, Andrew Wright, Senior Partner at CWJ said: “Not that many of our users were set up for remote working, and they helped us source some laptops very quickly,”
The success of the partnership has also delivered benefits that are more than just technological. Highlighting our agile, friendly, and personable approach, Andrew adds: “The key reason we chose Access Managed Services was the cultural fit. We felt like we could just pick up the phone and sync issues would get sorted. If we ever needed to, we also felt we could escalate issues right to the top of the business.“
When our guys phone them, there's a sort of warm fuzzy feeling, which means people will always phone them as the first port of call, rather than thinking of an in-house solution. Their agile approach and quick-footed nature also helps us make rapid decisions when we need to.
The future
In the next stage of CWJ’s partnership with us, their phone system and collaboration tools will be reviewed - with the potential of utilising Microsoft Teams to deliver an all-in-one, cloud-based telephony and collaboration solution.
