Case Study
GFA Strategic
Faster, and more reliable IT!
GFA Strategic is a 2-partner accounting firm with 7 team members based on the Gold Coast. As a firm they use a mixture of cloud and server-based applications, using Xero for client files, XPM for Practice Management and HowNow on the server for document management.
When we first met Allan Godbee and the team in late 2019 they were in a hosted server environment, and were wanting to make changes to their IT infrastructure.
The two main issues that Allan was looking to solve were the lack of proactive advice from their IT and the reliability issues that they were experiencing in the data center.
“We found that the previous provider wasn't that proactive where the only contact would be from us when we had a problem.
There were also a number of outages in the hosted server environment, which had quite an impact in cost to the practice and obviously impacted our client work.”
After extensive scoping with Allan and the team, Freshmethod identified that the best way to move forwards was to move their data out of the hosted server environment and into an on-site server.
Initially Allan thought that moving to an onsite server would mean taking a step back technically, but we were able to demonstrate that moving out of the hosted server environment would have four key benefits:
1. Reduction in their monthly bills
2. Simplify the hardware they were using and reducing risk
3. Increase their speed and connectivity
4. Improve their systems reliability
GFA Strategic needed a server as a number of their core applications, including HowNow, were server-based. As part of our IT Optimisation Plan, we outlined a roadmap for Allan and the team to move off the server in the next three years, to decrease their expenses and increase productivity.
After a smooth onboarding process, Allan and the team have noted that their systems are now running faster than ever, and they’re no longer experiencing the kind of reliability issues they had in the hosted server environment.
Another benefit from the switch that Allan has identified is that he now has more control over his environment and the suppliers that they work with.
“One benefit of the way it's now structured compared to the previous structure was the previous provider looked after everything under one contract being IT, internet, telephones, etc.
Now it's all individual contracts, which provides us with more flexibility, which is good.”
Moving forwards, the team at GFA Strategic have an IT Partner managing their infrastructure, and we have been able to proactively provide them advice and resolve their issues, meaning that the team can concentrate on servicing their clients, without having technology as a disrupter.
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