Based in Reigate, Surrey, Cole Marie Partners Limited are Chartered Accountants providing individuals, partnerships and companies with a personal, professional service. A business built on its reputation for high quality service, they offer accounting, taxation advice, payroll, company secretarial and business support. Having a solid reliable IT system is critical to meet client and HMRC deadlines, maintaining their reputation for a quality professional service. M2 Computing were approached to review their IT system which was extremely slow and hindering productivity.
“I have been delighted with the system and service levels over the past few months and are looking forward to a long working relationship with M2 Computing going forwards” comments Vicky Curran, Owner, Cole Marie, Surrey.
Background
Based in Reigate, Surrey, Cole Marie are Chartered Accountants providing individuals, partnerships and companies with a personal, professional service. A business built on its reputation for high quality service, they offer accounting, taxation advice, payroll, company secretarial and business support. Having a solid reliable IT system is critical to meet client and HMRC deadlines, maintaining their reputation for a quality professional service.
Slow Connections and Internet Outages
Prior to working with M2 Computing, their IT service was delivered via a virtual server system. Whilst virtual desktop solutions can be successful in some locations, Cole Marie frequently experienced slow connections and complete Internet outages, making it very difficult to work. M2 Computing were approached to review the issues, following a client referral. Before recommending a fix to the situation, we conducted a full IT systems review to determine the right solution for Cole Marie Partners.
New systems
The new system design for Cole Marie Partners reverted back to a client server on site, with a view to significantly improving the overall IT performance. Most of the PCs were running Windows XP, so these where replaced with new devices powered by the latest i7 processors, providing them with the optimum computing experience. All employees have the option to work remotely if required and the payroll department based in Wales are linked to the main office in Reigate, via a secure virtual private network. An unreliable telephone system was also replaced with a new efficient telephone system from Avaya.
Migration to Office 365
To improve operations and productivity, we recommended that all employees were migrated across to Office 365 providing them with the latest Microsoft Office software, business class email with archiving and compliance features. The Office 365 email migration took place over a weekend to ensure minimum disruption to the business during the transition. The complete IT solution at Cole Marie is maintained with the M2 Assist Gold IT support package. “Now M2 Computing are looking after our systems, the IT side of my role is completely redundant. It is such a relief that it is all sorted now and everything works as it should.” comments Mark Gould, Accounts Administrator, Cole Marie.
Switch to Sage Client Manager
As part of the systems and software analysis, we reviewed the Sage installation and usage. Cole Marie have over 200 clients currently using various software editions of Sage. We discovered some inefficiencies when storing different versions of sage accounts data, and recommended switching to the Sage Client Manager Software. This solution is specifically designed to address the problem, by offering a number of additional features to improve productivity including the ability to open customer accounts created with older versions of Sage.
Summary
IT issues were once a headache for Cole Marie, impacting their day to day work and threatening their ability to service their clients. M2 Computing have installed a new system across the business that will keep them working efficiently and will grow as they grow. “I have been delighted with the system and service levels over the past few months and are looking forward to a long working relationship with M2 Computing going forwards” concludes Vicky Curran, Owner, Cole Marie.
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