Case Studies

Case Study on Strategic IT Consulting

The Scenario: Five different offices, five different systems
This fast-growing, East Coast law firm has six offices in four states with more than 150 users. Each of those offices had different computer systems, operating systems and phone infrastructures. As a result, the company was experiencing compatibility problems and was not able to easily transfer data from office to office. In addition, network and system maintenance protocols were nonexistent, due to the disparity of systems. Thus, the company routinely experienced network outages and computer problems that limited productivity.

The Solution: Ongoing maintenance and equipment upgrades
Ontrac proposed to manage the company's networks and system infrastructure at all five offices (a sixth office was just opened in early 2005). For starters, Ontrac helped the company conduct a full inventory of their network hardware, desktop systems, lap tops and printers. Then, Ontrac technicians helped the company upgrade all systems so they were all running on the same operating systems, application software and more. At this time, Ontrac also addressed security issues and implemented a full security system and firewalls to protect sensitive client data. Once the immediate "fires" were addressed, Ontrac helped the law firm strategically plan for future computing needs, set network and computing standards for new offices, and generally develop a plan for computing infrastructure designed to support the company as it continues to grow.

The Result: IT standards set, outages eliminated
This law firm now has specific plans and standards in place on how to add new computer systems for employees, how to bring new offices on line with standardized IT systems, how to prevent network outages and more. Ontrac now conducts preventative maintenance on network hardware and desktop systems, which has vastly improved interoffice communications, data transfer and virtually eliminated the network outages that were routinely occurring.

The Nugget: IT infrastructure planning worth its weight in gold
Taking a proactive and strategic approach to planning and managing an IT infrastructure costs is a smart investment, which reaps rewards in time savings and improved productivity.