The power of partnership for cloud migration

It should be no surprise that the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged many organizations to begin or accelerate a cloud migration journey. In fact, McKinsey found that the pandemic accelerated digitization in the business world by several years.

Accountancy firm MHA Tait Walker was fortunate to be ahead of the curve on this shift. MHA Tait Walker provides not-for-profit organizations, large corporates, owner-managed businesses, and individuals with a complete set of accountancy and advisory services. A longstanding on-premises user of iManage Work document and email management system (DMS), the firm migrated to iManage Work in the cloud as part of their overall IT modernization initiative. But they didn’t do it alone—the right partner made all the difference.

Looking toward the cloud

Going back more than three years, all the business applications at MHA Tait Walker were primarily deployed on-premises with servers located in the Newcastle head office. As a firm that grasps the importance of technology for efficient and innovative business operation, MHA Tait Walker wanted to create a more powerful and resilient IT infrastructure, allowing their team to work from anywhere, and as part of that effort, moved the servers offsite and into the Microsoft Azure cloud.

Simon Brown, IT Partner, MHA Tait Walker, explained, “While we ‘lifted and shifted’ our tin boxes offsite to a data center, we also took a strategic decision to embrace the cloud, adopting Azure cloud for as much as possible of our estate. At the same time, we began reviewing all our application vendors to identify those that offered a cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) option. Fortunately, iManage Work was already a proven solution in the cloud, and with the DMS being a business-critical application for our firm, we decided to move forward with its transition to the cloud first, using the SaaS version. In fact, iManage Work in the cloud complemented our IT modernization journey.”

Finding the right partner

MHA Tait Walker’s partnership with Ascertus Limited dates back over a decade to when the firm first deployed iManage Work on-premises. Ascertus was an obvious choice as the implementation partner for the firm’s move to the iManage Cloud.

Ascertus undertook a thorough review of the firm’s data in iManage Work that comprised 10s of millions of files spanning a number of years. This process included revisiting the data structure in the on-premises application as well as data cleansing to ensure that only the most accurate, current, and relevant data was migrated to the cloud. Key to the data migration process was ensuring that the on- premises and cloud versions of the data were identical and synced, so that on go-live, MHA Tait Walker could confidently turn off the on-premises application.

The company also played a central role in ensuring that user adoption of the cloud solution was the best it could possibly be. Based on its formalized, structured, and well-tuned Customer Success Program, Ascertus delivered customized user training to all employees.

Cloud migration success

With Ascertus’ help, MHA Tait Walker has found great success with iManage Work in the cloud.

The firm’s files are now safer than ever, and available securely from anywhere. During the COVID-19 lockdown, everyone at MHA Tait Walker had secure, 24x7 access to the data in iManage Work. Professionals worked just as efficiently from home during that period as they did prior to it in the office. As a client-centric business, the firm was able to continue to work as normal with clients throughout the various lockdowns without data sensitivity concerns.

MHA Tait Walker has also found that moving to iManage Work in the cloud has improved usability through the advanced search functionality.

Brown concludes, “iManage Work in the cloud has been revolutionary. It’s driving business efficiency, but also helping us to be at the forefront of business change so that we are able to offer innovative services that meet the continually changing demands of our clients. We have exciting times ahead of us.”

To learn more about how their partnership with Ascertus helped them achieve cloud migration success, read the MHA Tait Walker case study.