Case Study

Thomas Hopper & Partners

"We have great relationships with our technicians, and I think that’s obviously key."

Thomas Hopper & Partners is a NSW-based firm, with 17 team members in Sydney and 9 offshore. The firm use a number of cloud-based applications alongside running an on-site server using MYOB AE as their practice management tool.

Thomas Hopper & Partners have been a client of Freshmethod for over six years and throughout that period our contact at the firm has been their Office Manager, Juanita Quirk. We sat down with Juanita recently to understand her perspective on how we help make her life easier, and to find out in her opinion what make’s good IT support.

One of the key areas where we help that Juanita highlighted is with proactively reaching out to the firm to make sure that everything is running effectively. We remotely get notifications for the firm’s hardware, and software, and reach out to the firm regularly to ensure all their tech is running smoothly.

The techs would contact us to say “Look, you've got an update for MYOB or Xero," or, "I can see some of your disks are getting full” or “You need new software for this".

What’s important is that there is the initiative to help us along and make work better, which takes the thinking away from us.

Obviously not everything at the firm can be addressed proactively, and there are often times when Juanita and the team will need to contact us needing a quick response for their issues. Whenever this happens, they’re able to log a ticket or call us if they need urgent attention which we can then fix remotely:

"The majority of the time, I'll log a ticket and wait, but if it's urgent, let's just say the server decided to shut itself down, I would call. And the girls who answer the phone, they're amazing. They'll be like, 'Yep, that's a problem. I'll log a ticket right now for you.' They're really amazing.

Then the remote support with the techs being able to log on remotely has been really good. Like you just say, 'Here's my computer number, log and fix it for me.' That's really the key thing."

Finally the most important aspect is having clear communication and a good relationship between the firm and techs:

"The most important thing for me with our IT Partner is the relationship we have with the IT technicians. It’s important to have a good relationship with the team and to make sure communication is open at all times.

We do have great relationships with our technicians and I think that's obviously key. You get to know them a little bit more personal. It's not just a, 'Hey, please fix this.' They're very personal and then you can get along with them all."

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Simply put, we manage IT for accounting firms. This includes a broad range of services from internet connection, email communication, VOIP, document management, cloud migration, accounting application integration, antivirus, cyber security and more. We provide and execute an IT strategy so our clients are benefiting from new industry technology efficiencies and ensure everything works together so you can get on with what you do best.

We’re different in a few ways.

Faster Response Times – We have the numbers to prove it. All our customer interactions are measured and tracked to improve our service to you.

Cloud Focused – While we do support hybrid and server based firms, we are a cloud native firm and we fully embrace technology change that improves productivity and efficiency.

Accounting Industry Experts – Our focus is 100% on accountants which means we understand your unique problems and the solutions that work for you. We are experts at managing and integrating accounting applications and we understand your workflow.

Our understanding of the Accounting Industry and the value each app provides means we are best positioned to provide an IT strategy that fits your firm. We work closely with app vendors to recommend which path to take at a pace that suits you. Our expert team can address specific cloud security concerns and make sure your IT is unified with the various systems talking harmoniously.

If you want to learn more about how we can help, it’s best to talk to one of our IT specialists.

Working with over 652 accounting firms and serving approx. 9000 accounting professionals across Australia and overseas - our service desk is scaled, meaning we have greater availability and resources on hand to answer your calls and emails.

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Our team is measured on a ‘fixed on first call’ percentage, which is currently sitting at 38%. Customer satisfaction has a net promoter score of 93. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it!

Our average call answer is 3 mins. For business critical issues, we promise to respond within 30 minutes and resolve your issue within the hour. Some incidents may require testing, research, problem solving or third party support before a solution can be found. We aim to keep our clients updated on the resolution plan progress in these circumstances and where possible, facilitate temporary workarounds to reduce the impact on your productivity.

Service requests are prioritised immediately as:

Priority 1 (Critical) – Major emergency – “Show Stopper”: e.g. loss of essential server/s or services affecting all users.

Priority 2 (High Impact) – A single or group of users are unable to perform time critical or important tasks, no reasonable workaround is achievable and this is affecting the Company’s ability to service its clients.

Priority 3 (Medium Impact)- A single user or a group of users have an issue with a program or service that is restricting their ability to work but it isn’t time critical or there is a reasonable workaround.

Priority 4 (Low Impact) – Any request that is not affecting productivity. This includes new user requests, or any issue that isn’t impacting on business continuity.

Priority 5 (Planned) – Scheduled, no SLA Any request that involves change of environment, advice or queries that fall outside of service, or needs to be planned and falls outside of the SLA.