A ransomware attack changed everything
“I didn't really think that I needed IT. And that's such a misconception, I realise that now, because really it's like the most important thing.”
In Jeri’s words
Why an international accountancy practice trusts its IT to a team it’s never met.
Read the full transcript
Hi, I'm Jeri Williams. I am the CEO and founder of Smooth Accounting in the UK and Smooth Dubai in the UAE. We are a chartered accountancy practice. I've been going for 10 years now, and what started as me at home just doing a few accounts is now 15 of us spread across different countries. We generally look after owner-managed businesses and individuals who need UK accounting and tax help. And we also help business owners who want to relocate to Dubai: set up the business, get the visas and everything, and then do all of their accounts and tax work in Dubai as well.
In the early days when I set up the practice, I didn't really have any IT support, but I didn't really think that I needed IT. And that's such a misconception, I realise that now, because really it's like the most important thing. I just bumbled along doing my thing on my own from home. And then I had a ransomware attack very early on in my business. And I was like, what on earth is this? What's happened? It took me ages to realise that I couldn't access any of my files. Then I started seeing the messages of, we've taken hold of all of your computer and unless you give us all this money, we're not going to give you the stuff back. And yeah, I just assumed that OneDrive would have backups or something, but apparently not.
So I found Reformed on LinkedIn because I saw that they were doing a webinar. It was all about automation and stuff. So I registered for the webinar, watched it, and my mind was blown about some of the things they were talking about at the time. And I remember thinking, I have got to get my IT sorted.
We are not local to Reformed IT at all. They are very much up north and we are as south as you can get. So I kind of thought, I'm not sure how that will work with distance. What if we need hardware support? In my head at that point, IT was very much like someone will turn up with a little toolkit and fix things that are broken. And I very quickly realised that that just wasn't the case. I mean, we've never met in person and it's been years and years now of them looking after us. There's not been a single thing they haven't been able to solve remotely, not one.
From their perspective, I don't think a huge amount has changed with how they look after us. They've been consistently good from the beginning. If I were to think of a company to model customer service on, it would be Reformed IT.
Reformed have been great because it doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter if it's, I've got a new person in the Philippines now, or I've got a new person who's going to work in the UK but they're going to work remotely, or they're going to come in the office. It doesn't matter what I say. They just set it up so that it's super secure. And I just have full trust in the security of our system, which for a firm that is international is so hugely important.
If they wanted to know whether to use Reformed IT or not, I would say absolutely, 100%, without a shadow of a doubt. Literally, I'm inundated with MSPs trying to get my business and it's never something that I entertain at all. If anything goes wrong with our IT and we have downtime, it's kept to such a minimum because they are just on it straight away. You just call them, and whoever answers the call will sort it out for you, and you just carry on with what you were doing. Having used Reformed for so many years now, I have no reason to look anywhere else.