Goughs' strategic IT review
Lights-On assessed Goughs core fundamental infrastructure issues, presented a balanced evaluation and set out a clear plan for future long term strategic aims.
A Lights-On Consulting strategic IT review helped leading Wiltshire law firm Goughs, to understand its technology infrastructure and set out a clear plan for the future.
Lights-On Consulting was approached by law firm Goughs to provide independent IT consultancy in two key areas:
- A comprehensive overview of the technology and infrastructure, and
- Recommendations on technology to support Goughs’ strategic plans.
Between us we decided that the best course of action was to conduct a strategic IT review. The Lights-On IT Review covers a lot of ground very quickly. It gathers information about the whole of the firm, encompassing infrastructure and staff sentiment. This involved several meetings and discussions with various members of the team at Goughs including the Partnership.
Due diligence
The Lights-On process started off with a Due Diligence document which gathered information about the firm, including the people and the technology. Our consultants were able to gather significant answers from this document alone.
It highlighted to us that Goughs had a number of technologies that were close to becoming ‘end of life’ – meaning that they would no longer be supported by the providers. We worked with the leadership team to establish a plan of action to solve the problems. Our consultants spent some time with the IT Department looking at the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Framework to audit servers and review capacity planning with the strategic plans of the firm in mind.
Plans for the future
With some solutions heading towards end of life, questions were being asked about cloud versus on premise services, which we were able to advise on. We focused on the immediate areas highlighted to us and provided factual feedback in plain English. This included subjective, objective and sentiment perspective. We included our interpretations of these coupled with our market knowledge to provide recommendations for the future.
We included suggestions on how to resolve issues, together with high-level consultancy on large-scale wide-reaching projects through to small projects to support the IT team at Goughs. This was all presented to the Partnership so they were able to ask questions and receive answers, again, in plain English without tech speak!
The Lights-On strategic IT review allows a firm to assess the foundation of its infrastructure. For Goughs, it allowed the firm to assess its core fundamental infrastructure issues and set out a clear plan for the future.
“We worked with Lights-On and were particularly impressed by the thorough and inclusive approach to gathering information and getting to know the firm’s IT infrastructure. Lights-On conducted many interviews with fee earners, support staff and partners so was able to present a balanced evaluation of where we were, what really worked for us and the areas for improvement. This comprehensive review was then followed with clear recommendations and options to enable us to plan and implement structural changes to meet the firm’s long term strategic objectives. Lights-On used plain English throughout ensuring that all partners had no difficulty in understanding the report and making decisions regarding the future direction of the firm’s core IT provision.”
Matthew Drew, Managing Partner