Pinkney Grunwells Embraces Flexibility and Scalability with VDI Transition

The Challenge

With on premise servers reaching end of life, and a less than satisfactory relationship with its current provider, Pinkney Grunwells had to find a better solution to their current situation, starting with its case management system which was coming to the end of its support. With just 12 months to find a new CMS, Daniel explored the options available.

We had a few potential CMS providers but when we came across Access Legal Proclaim and saw the demo, we could see it was the best fit for what the firm needed, said Daniel.

When Daniel was approached by Access Managed Services (formerly Oosha) he was impressed not only by what AMS could do for Pinkney Grunwells in terms of service quality, the proposal also offered cost savings based on the economies of scale that AMS could provide.

Keeping up with the pace of change

Daniel sees the advantages of having IT in the cloud. From having the latest versions of Microsoft 365 without having to manage updates, or work around file compatibility, to worrying less about servers not working or Microsoft changing its licensing, users not being able to log on and connect to the systems. Cloud provides the stability, predictability, and reassurance that going forward, everything is going to work and you’ll have fewer issues on a day to day basis.

In his 30 or so years at the firm, Daniel has seen many changes in technology, more so in recent years.

The lifetime of software and systems changes so quickly now. You have to have a good IT strategy in place or you will fall behind. Users can’t get work done as quickly and it causes more issues in the long run.

Making the decision to move to VDI

For Daniel, it came down to two things – performance and security.

The previous infrastructure was built on remote desktops (terminal services) and each user would connect to one of the servers. But if that user accidentally downloaded a virus, it could propagate through the RDS and impact other users. Performance wise, if someone was doing something that was resource intensive, that would reduce the performance of the system for other users who were also connected to that server.

VDI means that if one person needs more resources, it doesn’t impact other users. They have their own allocated resources on individual virtual machines. This also means that if a user accidentally triggers a virus, it’s isolated from other users and that virtual machine can be shut down and remedied without the risk of the virus propagating through the entire system.

We asked Daniel if he’d seen any improvements since moving to Access Managed Services.

User query management

If any of our users has a problem, they contact AMS directly. It’s not just the individual user queries - the AMS helpdesk can identify through the ticketing system any underlying issues that could be impacting systems, hardware or software, and resolve them more easily.

Our previous provider could take weeks, even months to provide a solution, whereas AMS engineers log on to the machine and before you know it things have been installed, reinstalled and a lot of the time it’s a few minutes to fix.

Reducing admin processes from 6 working days to 1

When asked if he noticed any performance improvements with the VDI, Daniel said that from an accounts point of view, posting a bill would take 5 to 6 minutes for each one to process. Now it’s usually under a minute. And when you’re processing 500 to 600 bills per month, that’s a saving of 5 working days through improve IT performance. This is particularly relevant when you consider that when bills are being posted, other accounts team members can’t do anything until they have completed.

No more bandwidth bottlenecks

With the VDI, each user has their own connection to the cloud so there’s no fighting for bandwidth to access the server network. Performance has improved because users don’t need to wait for things to happen so they can do their work.

Going live with VDI

AMS activated the new VDI over a weekend so people were able to login on Monday and everything would be ready in the new system. We had a week or two of enhanced support and were able to quickly remedy any minor fixes required soon after go live.

Today, all queries go direct to the AMS helpdesk, even Access Proclaim queries, and the support team are able to route queries as appropriate, which Daniel finds much easier to manage.

How has moving to a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) benefited Pinkney Grunwells with the performance of their Proclaim case management system?

I've seen first-hand the impact of implementing a VDI, going beyond performance improvements, my day-to-day experience has been significantly streamlined. System maintenance and updates, which were once a logistical challenge, are now executed with unprecedented ease. Deploying applications or patches across the entire organisation is done without the need for individual workstation interventions, saving us invaluable time and resources.

By moving Proclaim to a VDI, our users can now be more flexible with their work, simultaneously, this strategic move has allowed our business to scale its IT framework effectively, supporting our firm's growth objectives and expansion roadmap.

Would you recommend Access Managed Services VDI to other firms facing the same challenges?

Yes I would recommend AMS, he said.

The IT support, the ability of staff to get all the work done and having that support in one place, it makes things so much easier. If we have a problem with another vendor’s software, AMS will contact the vendor and check any issues and resolve for us. They know who we use, so they check with them to find out what the problem is. It’s really refreshing from our perspective, because we don’t hear “it’s not our problem” any more – the AMS team goes out of their way to help get things resolved.

Going forward, if a new customer were to get the service we’ve been having, they’ll have a very good experience. No one in the firm wants to go back to what we had before. Everyone at Access is very good at what they do.