Tech for collaboration

Redkite advances collaboration across its 16 offices with Quiss’ solutions for law firms

Redkite Solicitors, a full-service firm offering a range of legal services for businesses, individuals and families, was experiencing a sustained period of growth and integrating recently acquired legal practices into a single, secure network was seen as critical to the firm’s continued success. Ensuring the Cardiff-headquartered law firm’s more than 200 users shared the same technology across all 16 offices throughout South Wales and South West England was also deemed essential to maintain the levels of client-centric service for which the firm was renowned.

Matt Rhodes, commercial services manager at Quiss, said: “Given the ambition of the firm to improve collaboration and connectivity across their 16 offices and maintain the high-quality client service for which it is renowned, Azure Virtual Desktop was the natural choice. “It delivers a range of benefits beyond the obvious additional flexibility. It allows organisations to easily scale their virtual desktop environment, up or down, to address changes in their needs, delivers enhanced security, offers cost savings and improved productivity, along with streamlining the management of the technology involved.

“There are few technology businesses like Quiss that understand the complexities of the legal sector and the challenges faced by firms of all sizes, from single office locations to those such as Redkite with a dispersed workforce. “Over decades, we have acquired the experience, developed the expertise and shaped our capability to deliver tailored solutions that help law firms improve collaboration, connectivity and communication for their users and their clients.”

Collaboration and connectivity improvements

With a dispersed workforce, the benefits of a virtual desktop solution was the obvious answer to help improve collaboration between colleagues in different offices or those working from home, having adopted a hybrid approach to work. For Quiss, the natural choice was Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop with Teams, which would not only allow remote access to their desktop with the necessary applications, files and information but also make it possible, with the right permissions, for another user to access a colleague’s desktop. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop delivers numerous productivity benefits, especially when combined with Teams, to deliver the workplace flexibility modern law firms need to ensure closer collaboration and better communication with colleagues and clients alike.

The first task completed by the Quiss technical teams was the migration from a private cloud solution to the hosted Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, which combines scale, security and cost benefits whilst delivering a secure remote desktop from anywhere, at any time. It was also required to rationalise the firm’s main hosted applications, including workflow management and dictation software BigHand, together with the firm’s chosen Matter and Practice management application SOS. In addition to the move to a hosted desktop solution, due to the ease of deployment, cost-effectiveness and dependability, Azure Site Recovery was implemented to provide replication, failover and recovery processes to help keep applications running during planned and unplanned outages.

Support eases strain and removes pain

Combining technical expertise with technological know-how, Quiss also provide a range of support services to improve effectiveness and efficiency throughout Redkite’s 16 offices, ensuring little or no interruption to business as usual for the firm’s more than 200 users. The support is designed to reflect the modern hybrid approach to work, with users splitting their working hours between office and home, often on an irregular basis, which can require the service desk team to deal with a range of different issues compared to an office-only workforce.

Thanks to Quiss’ unrivalled legal sector experience, support is tailored to each client’s unique needs but incorporates everything needed from an operational and strategic perspective. The service, based on the number of users, can be scaled quickly to meet the changing needs of the business. The fast-paced legal environment requires a quick resolution of technical problems, whether that’s a forgotten password or a glitching app, to ensure little or no disruption to the workflow within the business and, ultimately, the efficient delivery of client work.

Rachael Birch, IT services manager at Redkite Solicitors, said: “Our firm has grown significantly in recent years and given the large geographic spread of our business, connecting colleagues more closely with each other and with our clients was critical to our continued success. Recognising the experience Quiss has of similar challenges with other law firms and their experience of implementing Azure Virtual Desktop with Teams across the legal sector proved a compelling argument in the selection process.

“We are experiencing a period of sustained growth, and the last thing we need to have to worry about is the scaling of our IT resources. Quiss has developed a range of services that offer any organisation a practical, pragmatic alternative to managing its own internal IT resources. It instils confidence, knowing Quiss are on hand to offer strategic advice and ready to respond to any technical issues as they occur, minimising disruption in what are increasingly busy Redkite Solicitors offices.”