Kreston Reeves
IT infrastructure management, consultancy and support.
As a growing business, Kreston Reeves needed an IT partner that could provide strategic advice and would be able to help it handle the complexities of mergers with other firms. Although Kreston Reeves has an in-house IT team, it also used an external company to provide additional support but was seeking an improved service.
At a Glance
Based in London, Kent, and Essex, Kreston Reeves advises dynamic organisations, private individuals, and families on all areas of business, tax and wealth. They seamlessly combine traditional accountancy services with specialist services in corporate finance, business advice, online accounting, and tax. The firm is growing, recently merging with Spofforths and Munslows, and has over 500 users at 10 UK offices.
Services Delivered
Technologies Deployed
Industry Sector
Business Driver
Challenge
Kreston Reeves chose Total to provide a managed IT support service and following a successful first term it has renewed its contract. Total provides a fast, 24/7 response, which has freed up the in-house team for other work, as well as consultancy services on major technology projects.
Solution
Kreston Reeves initially signed up for a one-year monitoring and third-line support contract, which has since been extended for a further three years and expanded to proactive management.
Total now provides 24/7 monitoring for Kreston Reeves’ main IT platform, including servers and storage, with proactive patching and updates. It also provides P1 fixes out of hours, and third-line support to provide help or advice for the company’s in-house IT team, as well as handling some license management.
Outcome
Due to its confidence in Total’s responsive support, Kreston Reeves’ IT team saves time by pushing more issues to Total. Previously, the internal team used to have to monitor systems in the evening, and would need to fix out-of-hours problems – this is all handled by Total now.
“When we call Total, we get hold of an engineer straight away, and usually get a fix the same day,” says Chris Madden, IT and Operations Director. “For example, last month we had a licensing issue with Outlook. We called Total and they came back that day with a fix, we tested it and pushed it out, and by the next morning it was all sorted.”
As part of the service, there are quarterly service meetings which provide an opportunity for any recurring issues to be reviewed.
Taking Care of Technology
There's a greater demand than ever for businesses to utilise technology and we are here to make that process simple.
Chris Madden
IT and Operations Director,
Kreston Reeves
We looked at several providers before choosing Total. Rather than just trying to sell us their service in a boardroom, we really liked it that Total invited us to see where they work and showed us their service desk in action, so we had a much better idea of what we would be signing up to.
At this stage there were actually a couple of providers we liked the look of so we decided to use Total and another company for trial consultancy projects.
After working with the consultants on a couple of key projects we got a good idea of what the service would be like. We felt that Total would be best for us, because they understood our outlook – like us, they were very open and honest. The engineers did a really good job, including resolving a priority one (P1) support issue for free before we had a contract in place.
Total has a good grip on things, and they understand our needs as an accountancy firm. That’s why the P1 issues are dealt with out of hours – we can't wait until 9am to fix something; it has to be working when the first users arrive at 7am.
If a critical server fails to reboot overnight, Total will jump on there and fix it, and make sure that server comes back up. The next morning, our accountants are using it before our IT team even arrives for the day.
Due to its confidence in Total’s responsive support, Kreston Reeves’ IT team saves time by pushing more issues to Total. Previously, the internal team used to have to monitor systems in an evening, and would need to fix out-of-hours problems – this is all handled by Total now.