Case Study – Douglass Grange

About Douglass Grange

Founded in 2006, Douglas Grange specialises in acting as the effective Finance Director to businesses that aren’t large enough to require one full-time. As well as schools, we currently have a lot of clients in the hospitality, construction and consultancy sectors, many of whom came to us through word-of-mouth recommendations.

What was your IT set up?

Originally, we were using an in-house office server but it was getting slow so we needed to replace it. We considered investing in a new server and also looked at the cloud options. We decided Microsoft Azure was too expensive, plus we wanted to go with a hosting provider that had experience of working specifically with accountants. So, we chose another provider (HDUK) and used them for a couple of years, but unfortunately the experience wasn’t very good. We had a lot of downtime during those two years, so we decided to find an alternative.

What frustrations did you have with your previous setup?

Lots of things – many of them annoyingly basic. If we had an issue with something like the printer (a quick fix) we would ring up, be given a ticket and then not hear anything for the rest of the day. We would try to call them back to chase it up, but we could never get through to an actual technician!

There were lots of outages too, we’d get knocked off the system for 15/20 minutes with no explanation, and there was no guarantee of when we’d be back online.

And then there was the downtime in January. It was very frustrating and led to a drop in morale, because staff couldn’t get on with their work at the busiest time of the year! Thankfully we’ve not had any of those types of issues with Cloud2Me.

What made you choose Cloud2Me?

When we met Cloud2Me at an event, we were quickly reassured by the fact you clearly understood the accountancy sector, and had a lot of accounting clients already. We took a couple of references from other accountants and they all came back with glowing reviews of your service – that feedback was invaluable! Following that due diligence, we decided to move over to you.

How was the migration and implementation process with Cloud2Me?

Given we’d only moved over to another provider two years previously, there were some staff members who were slightly unsure about switching. It all went swimmingly though, including the addition of extra security measures, such as 2FA. I have far fewer concerns now about data breaches because everyone uses 2FA on a daily basis. It’s brilliant! Everything just worked too – all the files and storage were moved over with no issues at all, and even little things, like the printers, all worked from day one.

How has Cloud2Me helped your firm?

We’ve been able to just get on with our work and not worry about any IT issues – such as whether the whole thing is going to go down without any notice – as with the previous supplier! Even small outages cost our business a lot of money, so having something that is reliable is really important to us.

How have you found Cloud2Me’s support?

The support has been fabulous, and I’ve not had any negative feedback from any other member of staff. On the rare occasion we’ve needed to call you, we’ve always spoken to someone immediately who knows what they’re doing – and nearly every single time we have the problem fixed there and then. I would definitely recommend Cloud2Me.