REFORMED IT HELP NOTTINGHAM LAW FIRM, RICHARD NELSON LLP TO ACCELERATE GROWTH PLANS
Richard Nelson LLP have already seen impressive growth in their business since they were founded in 2003. However with more exciting growth in the pipeline over the coming months and years, their IT systems need to keep pace
As one of ‘The Times Top 200 Law Firms‘ in the UK, Richard Nelson LLP are being Nationally recognised for the outstanding services they offer to individuals, businesses and professionals throughout England and Wales. They are committed to providing the best legal advice within their areas of expertise such as professional disciplinary, defending regulatory investigations, specialist criminal defence, defending transport and road traffic offences, litigation and private client work.
As a firm, Richard Nelson LLP have seen significant growth since they started back in 2003, but this growth had accelerated in 2019 having added 18 new members of staff to their team. Further growth is expected over the coming months and years as additional expertise is added and a more diverse geographic area covered.
You can find out more about Richard Nelson LLP on their website here.
The Challenge
Due to their rapid growth, Richard Nelson LLP were finding their IT systems were beginning to struggle with the increased demands from the additional user numbers. Systems were slow and unresponsive and would sometimes freeze or crash at peak times. As consultants for the firm need reliable access to these systems throughout the day, it was imperative that they’re able to get on from anywhere in the UK and do their work efficiently.
Having had the existing servers (which had been specified by their previous IT partner) in place for over 3 years, the senior management team were unsure on the most suitable way forward. They needed a strategic IT partner who could come in and assess the current situation, gain a real understanding of the business needs going forwards and then present the most appropriate option for the future growth and demands of the users.
Choosing Reformed IT
Richard Nelson LLP appreciated the strategic and heuristic approach taken by the team at Reformed IT. Time was taken onsite and remotely to gain business intelligence and analytics from the existing systems. This allowed Reformed IT to understand the actual requirements on a per user basis for the system resources. This was combined with an analysis of data growth on an average per day metric. This led to better future planning on disk space, ensuring that the correct systems were specified and a timeline was clearly given as to when this would be consumed at the current rates.
When looking over the options put forward by Reformed IT against the incumbent IT partner and other options which had been put forward, it was clear to the management team that Reformed IT had fully understood the brief and had provided the best solution to fulfil their current and future needs. This was all clearly explained during a project meeting between the two parties which also allowed for any questions to be answered.
The Solution
The existing 3+ year old servers which were all out of manufacturers warranty were replaced with three new Dell servers which had been carefully planned to ensure a dramatic increase on performance and reliability. The servers were configured with high availability and business continuity in mind. Any single failure of any aspect of the servers or network can easily be remedied by the team at Reformed IT, often without any human interaction at all. In the event of a complete loss of the primary data centre, a secondary fall back site is configured and waiting. This fall back site is tested frequently during the year to ensure that Richard Nelson LLP fully complies with their responsibilities under their Lexcel accreditation.
One of the standout features within the new servers was the decision to go entirely with Enterprise SSD (Solid State Drives) instead of the now old fashioned traditional hard disk. This change alone can produce significant performance increases for computers and servers, often seeing a 10x speed increase when reading or writing data from the disks.
All of the installation of the new equipment was planned to be completed over a weekend to minimise any disruption to working hours for the team at Richard Nelson. Throughout the weekend, updates were given on the progress of the project to key members of the team and user testing was performed at key stages.
The project was completed on schedule and was fully tested on the Sunday ahead of everyone returning to work as normal on the Monday morning.
The Outcome
The changes have had a significant impact to the performance of all systems and software being used by the team. Even during the busiest of periods with everyone logged on from various locations throughout the UK, systems are very responsive and never suffer delays or lag anymore. Confidence has grown in the IT throughout the business and there is no longer a fear that expanding and growing the team will have a negative effect on computers which have so often caused frustration.
This allows Richard Nelson LLP to push forward with their ambitious growth plans for 2020 and beyond. At Reformed IT, we’re excited to see what the future has in store for this incredible business.
We are really pleased with the changes to our IT and feel that we have a solid platform to cope with our plans for growth going forward. Reformed IT are quick to respond to our queries and we have confidence in their expertise.