Shared Application Hosting

A bespoke Desktop-as-a-Service platform for hosting legal accounting software

Challenge

Already a long-time user of our hosted desktop services, this legal accounting customer approached us with a new business opportunity requiring a cloud platform to host a popular legal practice management software for their clients.

Solution

After investigating the requirements for the application (SQL Server with a Windows desktop application), our cloud team designed a secure, multi-tenant, hosted Windows environment; hosted at our private redundant datacentre facility.

Accessible from anywhere and on any device using Remote Desktop Services, as well as the core application the system also provides users with file shares, Exchange email services and all other line of business applications they need.

Outcome

As well as using the solution themselves, our customer also benefits from a diversified revenue stream by reselling it to their clients as a multi-tenant office-in-the-cloud service.

Secure Mobile Payments App

A secure, hosted, blockchain-based mobile payments system for solicitors.

Challenge

Solicitors meeting clients at a police station following their arrest need to secure payment before providing legal services. Usually this involves a time-consuming process involving referral to family or friends and processing payment by card.

Our customer, with an extensive client-base of solicitors, approached us to help develop a quick and easy-to-use mobile payments solution to streamline the client registration and payments process.

Solution

Working in partnership with our customer and a 3rd-party team of blockchain developers, we were able to produce an extremely secure payments processing infrastructure, making it assessible via custom-built and branded Android and iOS mobile apps.

Outcome

The solution works very well for the end-users' legal teams working out in the field; allowing them to deal with the necessary administration and to quickly get down to supporting their clients.

With redundancy built-in (with hosting at our private datacentre), the application has been extremely reliable, achieving a 99.98% availability record.

Billed to their clients on per transaction model, our customer also benefits from a lucrative secondary revenue stream.

Continuous Improvement Process

Using Microsoft Forms and Power Automate to manage a review process

Challenge

Capture input, issues and feedback regarding a client's core ERP solution from a large distributed workforce, to facilitate analysis and continuous improvement.

Solution

Taking advantage of the built-in tools in Office 365, we created a short questionnaire in Microsoft Forms and distributed it to staff via desktop links (for office-based staff) and shared Android devices (for shop-floor teams).

We then used Power Automate (Microsoft Flow) to capture the response details, using them to populate a Trello board. This was then periodically reviewed and assessed by a cross-functional team and used to plan mitigations as required.

Outcome

This basic, simple solution aided our client in identifying some key weaknesses in their manufacturing systems and processes. It also elicited a number of innovative suggestions that, once implemented, led to an overall increase in efficiency and staff productivity.