Wexford accountancy practice Sheil Kinnear has invested its future in the cloud.
Founded in 1893, Sheil Kinnear provides accountancy and auditing services to companies of all sizes around the country from its head office in Drinagh, Wexford, and locations in Enniscorthy and Arklow.
Following Sheil Kinnear’s recent merger with a second accountancy practice, Irish tech provider Datapac digitally transformed the business by integrating both IT systems and migrating all company devices, software packages and data to the cloud.
“We have full, secure access to company information in the cloud, with the added confidence that all data is fully backed up”
The solution supports effective remote and hybrid working and has improved collaboration for Sheil Kinnear’s 30 employees. In turn, the upgraded system enables Sheil Kinnear to better serve its customers with improved workflows. The solution is flexible and will scale to meet the company’s needs as it continues to grow.
Balancing the books in the cloud
All employee desktops now run in the cloud using Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop, and are securely accessed through thin clients. These small and portable cloud-based devices offer the same Windows desktop experience and can run from anywhere, enabling secure access to data, even on client site. This digital transformation of Sheil Kinnear’s business has resulted in significant cost savings for the company as the need for hardware upgrades and maintenance has been reduced.
“As a customer of Datapac for over 30 years, we knew we could trust them to deliver on this new and exciting chapter at Sheil Kinnear,” said David O’Connor, director of Sheil Kinnear.
“All of the development and background work was done off-site without interruption to our day-to-day business. The project was ongoing throughout an extremely busy time in our office and there was no disruption of service, with backup of data from our servers to the cloud carried out at evenings and weekends.
“The system ensures we have access to the most up-to-date servers running in the cloud and capacity will automatically expand to meet our needs. We have full, secure access to company information in the cloud, with the added confidence that all data is fully backed up. Most importantly, the Datapac solution has helped us to ride out the unprecedented disruption to business imposed by various Covid lockdowns. Datapac streamlined our infrastructure to maximise performance and scalability into the future, while enabling us to digitally transform our business.”
Datapac also refreshed Sheil Kinnear’s security posture with cloud-based and on-premise firewalls, and has secured company data with cloud-based backups to prevent information loss and ensure business continuity for the company. The Datapac solution also backs up data on Microsoft Office365 including Mail, Teams, and Sharepoint.
Additionally, employee onboarding and training has been made simpler with all information available from a single cloud source.
“It’s fantastic to see a company with such a rich business heritage like Sheil Kinnear truly embrace modern ways of working and move to an entirely cloud-based system,” said Kevin Hally, senior systems engineer at Datapac.
“They needed a complete overhaul of their IT infrastructure, and as the company’s trusted technology partner, Datapac delivered a scalable solution which will futureproof their systems for their evolving requirements.
“Sheil Kinnear’s decision to migrate to the cloud has enabled secure remote and hybrid working for staff and accelerated the transition of its workplace to a cloud-based, paperless environment.”
Main image at top: David O’Connor, Director, Sheil Kinnear and Kevin Hall, Senior Systems Engineer, Datapac
