Background

Crowe Clark Whitehill, a multi award-winning UK accountancy practice, is a leading authority in five areas of excellence: Corporate, Not for profit, Professional Practices, Pension Funds and Private Clients.

The overriding aim of the organisation is to act, and be regarded as, long-term trusted advisers to their client’s business or organisation.

They have 67 partners and around 525 staff based in eight offices across the UK.

Challenges

Having been wholly committed to asset management for more than ten years, Crowe Clark Whitehill had identified the numerous benefits of concise and up to date records of assets and software titles. However, Ian Norman, National IT director, explains the firm’s difficulties with its previous solution: "It proved highly expensive and was unable to fulfil our core requirements. We were keen to find a hosted solution that not only presented complete ease of use, but one that was also highly cost effective and efficient to deploy."

A decision was made to research and source a solution that boasted the above requirements as well as ease of navigation and multi-user functionality.

Solution

Parago Software demonstrated their solution.

Highly impressed by its icon based user interface, Ian commented: "The usability of Parago is very refreshing. The demonstrated ease of navigation and simplicity of use were two of the key reasons for our deployment of Parago."

The firm has been using Parago since March 2010 for all National IT assets.

Benefit

The accountancy firm is now confident of a thorough record of IT assets and software titles. Described by Ian as "a granular view of the whole estate," Crowe Clark Whitehill can now, at the click of a button, review its overall ownership and state of assets.

"The design and creation of this solution really does put the user at the heart of the issue. The standard suite of icons available is more than adequate, allowing us to easily import numerous details to each asset and software title, owned by the firm."

"With the introduction of the software usage metering facility we can now see not only what software is installed and licensed but also how often it is being used on every single machine. This has enabled the firm to closely monitor its licensing expenditure and helped to reduce overall licence counts" explained Ian.

A further function that Crowe Clark Whitehill has identified, is the ability to capture details of the company's power consumption. Furthering its commitment to a 'green image' the accountancy firm can now determine its electricity pay-out on all hardware such as servers, desktops, laptops, printers and some audio visual equipment. Identifying electricity use, the firm can issue policies such as designated switch off times. "The meter does not just calculate the energy savings for our firm, it also gauges C02 emissions. Being environmentally conscious is made easy!"

The IT and support managers at Crowe Clark Whitehill are also able to complete budget forecasting together, with ease, a feature of the multi-user functionality. Ian explained: "As all details are logged in one place, we can report on procurement and replacements very easily. Previously, this would have been much more complicated; with Parago it is now a quick task. The multi-user functionality has enabled our personnel to jointly manage the firm's asset management requirement, highly

The Future

Two future plans are currently in place at Crowe Clark Whitehill. At present, all mobile phone technologies such as Blackberries are excluded from Parago's view of assets. "In time we would like to add mobile phones to the technology suite so that we can have a clear view on ownership, contracts and replacement needs." explained Ian.

In addition, the firm would like to introduce the solution to other areas of the business; the finance department will benefit greatly from Parago. Concise procurement records, as well as guarantee details and replacement dates will allow for substantial cost savings and efficient future spend.

Ian concluded: "Asset management is a crucial task for firms nationwide. A responsibility that can seem somewhat daunting and time-consuming, however, this issue is made extremely simple and hassle free with Parago."