Introduction

Lettens is a Melbourne-based Chartered Accounting firm with over 50 staff. Lettens provide a total accounting and financial service, tailored to servicing a diverse selection of small to medium business owners throughout Australia.

Word of mouth referrals led to an extensive client base extending well beyond Metropolitan Melbourne and Regional Victoria to include all major cities and most regional centres of Australia and New Zealand. Although, based in Melbourne, Lettens’s staff travels to service its clients in other states and regional centres.

Clint Wardley is the IT Manager and is responsible for managing Lettens’ head office and subcontracting IT services to clients around Australia and New Zealand.

The Challenge

In 2008,Lettens were faced with a number of challenges that prompted Mr. Wardley to search for a better solution.

"We had Managed Exchange hosted with a third-party supplier, and were unhappy with the speed and level of support provided.

"We realised that although we were following the proper procedures for back up and disaster recovery, should a disaster occur our down time would cause enormous losses to the company’s bottom line. We also wanted to reduce the constant expenditure on back up material and off-site storage.

"We also wanted to give staff the ability to work remotely from home and clients’ premises with the same operational speed as the office. Not being able to offer this option meant that a lot of hours were wasted with staff redoing work after visiting clients or working weekends in the office to keep up.

"In addition we realised that our servers required an upgrade in order to support our new APS software package, as well as new document management application - Interwoven. The expected cost to do this was considerable. At the same time we were challenged with the need to reduce the number of IT staff and still be able to provide a positive 3rd level support option."

However, the core issue was the realisation that managing IT was becoming a distraction to from our core. We wanted to reduce the cyclic cost of keeping up to date with the latest software and hardware. Not only was this an expensive exercise, it was immensely disruptive to the entire company as new equipment and upgrades were installed.

The Solution

"We selected Wavenet, an IntraPower company, as we were confident that they had the necessary experience with the virtual desk solution, ensuring it would be delivered successfully with minimum risk.

"The Desktop On-Demand solution provided access to Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, APS and Interwoven. As part of the solution, we gained access to a professional, enterprise-grade infrastructure without having to incur the cost of building our own IT infrastructure. I was also impressed by the fact that the services provided by IntraPower were backed by 24x7 support with the security of proven backup and disaster recovery processes and procedures.

"The system transition was a huge task and the IntraPower team implemented it from end-to-end. Once we approved the proposal, IntraPower built the system in parallel to our existing system. They duplicated our software and data into their data centre, keeping in mind our additional requirements for softwares such as APS and Interwoven.

"I was very impressed with the service delivery. We initially maintained our hosted mail exchange solution, but the Business On-Demand platform significantly improved response times.

"With our final transition into IntraPower’s hosted mail exchange solution, we immediately experienced speed improvement. I think the private network IntraPower installed has made all the difference as we are not relying on the public internet now to access this critical service. "

The Results

According to Mr Wardley, engaging with IntraPower resulted in a number of benefits:

"Our users are happy as their applications are now running much faster. Our onsite PCs have been reinvigorated and we will not have to upgrade them for the foreseeable future and yet we are running the latest Microsoft Office suite.

"Our previous in-house backup and disaster recovery procedure, though tested, always had lingering doubts if a full recovery had been required. Now we can sleep at night knowing that our On-Demand services also have a backup and disaster recovery regime that is 100% secure. 

"Cost is a major factor to us. I liked the fact that the Business On-Demand solution provided a cost-effective alternative solution to upgrading our local infrastructure and had the added benefit of secure remote access for our staff. 

"Best of all, we now understand our IT costs and in the long term will have saved significantly on our IT operating expenditure, which will go straight to the bottom line profit. Furthermore, that saving does not include the extra time that we are now able to dedicate to focusing on our core business."

About Lettens

Lettens is a Chartered Accounting firm with over 50 staff, providing a total accounting & financial service, tailored to servicing a diverse selection of small to medium business owners throughout Australia..

From our very beginning in 1978, the Company founder, Mark Letten, focused on providing clients with pragmatic commercial advice in a unique style of no-nonsense and straight-to-the-point guidance on all aspects of their business.

Word of mouth referrals led to an extensive client base extending well beyond Metropolitan Melbourne and Regional Victoria to include all major cities and most regional centres of Australia and New Zealand. Based in Melbourne, our staffs travels to service our clients in other states and regional centres.