PCG Case Study: Accounting Firm in Southern Maine
Dave Hodgdon, CEO and founder of PCG, talks with John Maher about how PCG’s managed IT services helped an accounting firm in Southern Maine. He explains the company’s tech concerns and details how PCG dealt with these concerns and helped improve the firm’s tech environment.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher, and I’m here today with Dave Hodgdon, CEO and Founder of PCG, a managed service and IT provider with headquarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Today we’re doing a case study on an accounting firm in southern Maine. Welcome Dave.
Dave Hodgdon: Good afternoon, John. How are you doing today?
The Accounting Firms’s IT Challenges
John: Good, thanks. So Dave, tell me a little bit more about this accounting firm and some of the issues that they were having that brought them to you.
Dave: Yeah. We got a call through one of the partners. Again, they’re in southern Maine. They had been with an existing managed service provider for some time. We just did a basic chat about some of the issues, went over a few things they could do, but I always ask the question of the one or two things they think they could do better.
1. Slow Response Times
Dave: He really said their response time, everything just wasn’t quite the same. So I figured, when you do this long enough, you have an idea that I pretty much spot on knew who the vendor was and there was a great MSP here locally that sold their business to another MSP, which sold their business again. So it changed, John, where their support was coming from.
And it was obvious to me that they just weren’t getting the attention they needed. So we were able to have the original meeting. We went onsite. We looked at their equipment, which was fine. It really came down to the lack of response, the users not giving them some guidance.
2. Software Performance Issues
Dave: But we also, as we dug in more, we started asking about the performance of accessing their accounting software. And it kind of shocked us, that we realize that in today’s world everything is based upon a solid state drive, quicker access, quicker response times. And they had older style SATA drives there, which just didn’t give the performance. So, we knew where that performance issue was coming from.
3. Security Concerns
Dave: We, like all CPA firms, security’s top of mind for them. So we wanted to make sure how they were handling their data, how they’re accessing their data, who had access to their data, how they’re backing up their data, how they’re remoting from home. So it was very important to do that security as we look at their data.
4. Inconsistent PC Setups
Dave: And any time they talk about performance, you have to look at some of the PC setups. So we spoke to the various users. There was inconsistency. So I think over time when the MSP was solved, with a few years, things were being neglected and you could see some inconsistencies in the setup.
And I tell you, John, having a PC setup a template and having, knowing what they need for setup for applications, for data, for shares, for printers, you need to have a blueprint. So it was apparent to us that that hadn’t been happening.
5. Need for Tech Guidance
And they really just wanted some guidance. They wanted to put out their hand and they wanted us to take that hand and give them some guidance and meet their staff requirements, because in the CPA world, when the tax seasons are happening, they have a lot of work to do and they just want things to work.
PCG’s Strategy to Help
John: Right, absolutely. So what was the strategy that you implemented and what were a couple of the first things that you implemented in order to really get them up to speed initially?
Dave: Yeah, my first meeting was with the partners of just having a business discussion of what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing. What would they like better? Where they’re taking their practice and the acquisitions. Is there anything going on that we should be aware of?
And once I got their bare data, I pretty much said this would be the game plan of how it worked. We’d have one of our techs come out and do a network audit, what’s in place. We would touch base with the vendors to make sure what they thought they had was in place and supported. We wanted to confirm their current backup, we wanted to check the firewall. It was just doing, like you do a home inspection, you just go through and dot your I’s, cross your T’s. What’s in place that’s good? What’s in place that might need some attention? And are there any critical issues that should be addressed right away?
From that first meeting, we said that after our network audit, we’ll come back and do a security assessment. We call it a risk score, John. Going through the checklist of, when’s the last time you did a security suspect? Do you have a password policy in place? Do you guys do security training and any campaigns to help your staff pay attention to what’s going on out there? Do you guys allow your phones to be used on the public or the private network in the office? So you just go through the basic stuff, the standard stuff necessary to have a secure network.
Results of the Network Assessment
John: Okay. And then in terms of doing that network assessment, what are some of the initial things that you discovered through that process?
Dave: Well, one thing I think I mentioned earlier, one of the big things we saw when they’re talking about performance, after we saw the asset tag on the server, we did a little digging what was on there. It became apparent to us that in the accounting world, it’s very discontent with accessing those files. Multiple people are trying to get to it. The drives just weren’t keeping up. So we knew right away, changing out the SATA drives to the SSD drives were going to be huge. Some of the desktops, speed is important from all points and it needs to start from the PC to the switch to the firewall. So similar to traffic jams out on a highway, if there’s a bad point, there’s going to be that traffic jam.
So it’s important to make sure the PCs were right, and some of them weren’t right. The switch was fine, so that wasn’t a problem. And then the server was one of the bottlenecks. So we were able to verify the infrastructure and get through that. We saw some of the PCs. We were getting complaints on some of the inconsistencies and we saw some of those machines needed to be replaced, John. We wanted to make sure we documented what was necessary for us to come back to them for some of those critical issues to be replaced.
And one thing that’s always most important to PCG, should something major go wrong at that business, we know we can recover their data and it has to be somewhere else. And given that timeframe, do you want that data in two hours, four hours, eight hours? And just giving them peace of mind should it be in tax season and something goes on, they knew that their downtime would only be X. It’s important that a client knows what that is, because that way we can meet that expectation or not. Because if they’re saying they only want a two day recovery and then we plan it that way, but then when something happens, well I need that now, and all the data’s off site, it’s very difficult to do that.
Setting Up a Backup Server
John: Right. And like you said, with an accounting firm like this, time is of the essence, especially if that tax due date is coming up within the week, and they really need to get that data back right away. So that’s being able to get that up and running in a day or two or something like that, it would be really important for them.
Dave: Yeah. They didn’t have that in place. So we did put what’s known as a backup server in place. They use a buzzword called a BDR. So we put the appliance on site. We did the images to that. And then we also did the images up to the cloud. So we really tightened the gap. Should something go wrong, we had something locally, as well as in the cloud for them.
What Tactics Did PCG Implement?
John: And then what were some of the tactics that you implemented? After you’ve done this discovery phase and you figure out what all of the issues are and what it is that you need to do, what are the tactics that you implemented in order to really get them where they should be?
1. Onboarding Process
Dave: We sit down with the leadership team and explain to them, once we had all the information from the assessments, John, we go back to them, kind of explain, this is how this process works. And we use our blueprint, which is very visual to them of how the onboarding works, of how does it work leaving the other MSP and us coming in.
So we went through that. We give them the 30 day notice. We help them with the wording to get to them. We train their staff ahead of time. We tell them this is the particular day’s going to be the cut-over. We’re going to be handholding with you during that whole cut-over, and there the following day to deal with any issues.
They know during that first month, we don’t know everything about their network. It’s up to us to document, document, document. In the tax world, you never do cut-overs during tax season, so we planned this during the summer. After we had that in place, we were able to tell them that this would be the date for the cut-over. In order to do projects, you need to know more. So having that onboarding, John, to be a managed client was the first key component.
2. Security Risk Assessment
Dave: From there we said, “Let’s also run our security risk assessment.” So we did a more detailed assessment of where things are. That really gave them a good idea of where their gaps and vulnerabilities were, and gave them a plan and a direction and cost of what needed to be done. And that was good that they had that because they never had that before.
3. Improving the Server
Dave: We did know that their server was under specked. We told them what it would take. The server box was fine, and it could take SSDs. So we could use them and they didn’t have to go out and buy a new server. We were just able to procure additional SSD drives and change those solid state drives to increase the performance.
4. Refining the Backup Strategy
Dave: They did not have a good backup. They used a product called Carbonite, which is data only in the cloud. It did not give them that full recovery time that they thought they had, John. They thought that, yeah, our backup’s in the cloud, we’ll be able to run in no time, but that was data only. So you had to educate them. Well, that’s just the data. That’s not your tax software. It’s not going to be an operational mode. So we really talked about the recovery time objective, and we hit them on there.
5. Scheduling a VCIO Meeting
Dave: We told them after the original onboarding and going through that stuff, after 60, 90 days, we would come to them with what we call the VCIO visit. And at that point we would, here’s how we did. How do you think we did? Please give us any feedback. Good, negative. We’re here together to work this through. And the big part which came about was addressing some of those projects that they talked to us about in the initial meeting and giving them a roadmap and a budget.
Outcomes of Working With PCG
John: How long have you been working with this accounting firm in Maine? And what has been the outcome of working with them?
Dave: We have been with them, we just finished our third year with them. So yeah, we brought them on in 2018 and it’s going great. After we successfully onboarded, the feedback we got from the office manager is just you guys just communicate, you tell us what’s going on.
All of our clients get a dedicated phone number. They know that they can reach out to us. In the accounting world, we know that when things aren’t working right, we expect you to call us and we need to meet that timeframe. It was important to us that we coordinate when they felt they could have the downtime to change out equipment because when you change out equipment, there is going to be downtime. They didn’t want to pay overtime for help on evenings or weekends.
So they typically knew that Friday was their slow day. So, we prepped everything, and on Friday we did the cut-over for them. We worked on the machines that had to be changed out for the users. That worked out well. Once we got them up and running, we have our tech going to quarterly visits right now for the onsite. We call it the IT strategy review, John. That’s like the big picture, here’s where you’re at, here are the current issues we see and some things to begin the roadmap to help them give a budget. We really worked hard on training the staff of how to, because they always talked about how they weren’t getting the right support from the other customers, so we trained them how to submit a ticket.
Transitioning From the Existing MSP to PCG
John: Right. Tell me a little bit about the cut-over. From a firm that’s working with a previous managed IT company, and then they start working with you, do you recommend that they continue to work with the old company for issues that they’re having with their computers or their servers or their systems while you’re already starting to do your network assessment and reviewing what it is that they need before you do the cut-over? How does that transition period work?
Dave: Good question, John. They weren’t getting the support at all from their current MSP. So, once the client gives their notice to an MSP, you see the support, they’re not into it anymore. From our side, if that happens with us, we believe you keep your chin up, your integrity and you do what you can, because you never know if that client’s going to come back.
But once you choose the date for the cut-over, there is no more support from the other vendor. So, here’s the date. It’s going to be September 1st. We do everything necessary ahead of time. And the current company that they’re dealing with is no longer supporting them at all.
Contact PCG to Talk About Your Accounting Firm’s IT Strategy
John: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Dave, and thanks again for speaking with me today.
Dave: My pleasure.
John: And for more information, you can visit the PCG website at pcgit.com, or call (603) 431-4121.