Our customer: a law firm with offices in the Midwest specializing in business law, family law, municipal law and estate planning. It’s a family business that’s been around since the late 1940s, and they’ve helped countless clients for generations.
The Challenge
It had felt like generations since the firm last updated their technology. In late 2022, they relied on physical servers outside the state for document storage and still counted on Microsoft Office 2010, among other outdated software and equipment.
This led to frequent problems, with resets and other issues occurring so often they became normalized. It was time for an overhaul.
The Solution
It’s easy to say an overhaul is needed, but a comprehensive technology restructuring such as this takes a lot of time and care. Transferring years of documents — many of them sensitive and confidential — is a massive, hours-long undertaking. A clean transfer from the private data center was crucial to ensure that no documents were lost and security remained intact.
Legacy software poses a unique hurdle because organizations often put those updates on the backburner. But as time and technology march on, the issues snowball and make it more difficult to then migrate to a modern platform. Security gaps may exist, and those older systems have likely run out of support, adding to the risk of everything going wrong. Creating a successful move to a new platform from such an older system in a secure manner with minimal downtime posed a major challenge.
On top of this, all employees at the firm required new computers with new software, which meant additional training for staff members. During our discovery and structured planning phases of this project, we decided to set up a demo unit in the firm’s offices for employees to try — allowing the end users to get hands-on experience and give their stamp of approval once the project wrapped.
Finally, time was a compelling factor. The entire process had to be accomplished with as little downtime as possible so the firm could continue to assist their clients without interruption.
The Results
The firm has taken a major leap since their technology refurbishing. They now have current software running on current hardware, allowing for a much smoother workday for all employees. Glitches and errors are no longer a regular occurrence. The team is expected to gain even more efficiency now that they are, quite literally, up to speed.
The continued use of AVD is proving to be beneficial as well. AVD provides a modern platform the firm can easily maintain and grow with as they increase efficiencies. That, coupled with a comprehensive layered security platform, provides them with a state-of-the-art platform they can safely use in today’s IT landscape.
We also provided a technology roadmap that aligns with the law firm’s business goals, and the employees now know they have a Technology Management partner to rely on for support and expertise. The employees trust that Elevity has their backs.
What Elevity Offers
We look at every scenario using our 4S approach: Strategy, Security, Solutions and Support.
Our Strategy meant accommodating the firm to conduct this overhaul on a less disruptive timeline while laying the groundwork for an ongoing proactive and comprehensive technology plan. We ensured Security in every document transfer, with all encryption properly in place during the move to the cloud services of a trusted industry giant: Microsoft. Our Solutions included setting up a demo unit for additional training. And our team now provides continued Support to the firm — committed to nurturing a long-term working relationship.
This was a once-in-a-decade technological overhaul, which will now be maintained at a high level of excellence until it’s time for the next big IT renovation.
Elevity offers fully managed technology services for small and mid-sized businesses, as well as co-managed technology services for larger companies whose IT departments need an extra hand. We encourage you to contact us and discuss what new technology solutions we can bring to your business.
