Customer Story: Holman Webb

Accelerating Digital Transformation with Holman Webb.

Situation.

Holman Webb is a commercial and insurance law firm with over 60 years of experience and the scale to provide top-tier legal services. With the vision of being a leading innovator, Holman Webb sought to commence their digital transformation journey. Being a highly competitive industry, Holman Webb recognised that innovation and the enablement of digital client engagement were imperative in fostering their long-term success.

Solution.

Holman Webb realised that having a long-standing server room with ageing infrastructure built over decades, meant considerable time, resources and budget spent on a non-core business function. When looking to gear the business towards a digital-first approach, they engaged the market for providers who could help them achieve this transformation. Steve Ferhad, CTO of Holman Webb, says there were multiple challenges faced by the business which were characteristic of an ageing IT environment. “Prior to my

arrival, it was a typical picture of a legacy environment that wasn’t planned” he explains, with a dedicated team spending an hour each morning within their inhouse server room to ensure business-critical applications were online. There was a real possibility of outages that could impact business operation.

For Holman Webb to pivot their efforts towards customer-centricity rather than network admin, they went to the market to find a partner who could help them with their digital transformation journey. Macquarie Cloud Services, with a similar passion for

customer excellence, offered a clear path to migration and a hosting solution through their Launch (IaaS) private cloud solution which was a perfect fit for the company. “We work in a highly dynamic and stressful environment where you need your systems up and running 24×7. The cost of a mistake can be millions of dollars of lost revenue for our clients. We needed a partner we could trust and Macquarie Cloud Services fit the bill” Steve says.

The Private Cloud Approach.

Migrating from the ageing server room over to Macquarie Cloud Services’ Launch private cloud solution was seamless. It offered Holman Webb greater flexibility and availability with 99.9% uptime of their key case management platforms and document storage systems, allowing for around the clock access across locations and devices.

In addition to continuous uptime, Holman Webb’s environment is now hosted within the security of Macquarie’s Intellicentre 2 (IC2) Tier III data centre. “The fact that our data resides within an ISO27001 (the highest global standard for data security) certified data centre gives us a real competitive advantage, it allows our customers peace of mind that their sensitive data exists under the highest global standard for data security. The same can’t be said for some of our competitors” states Steve.

Results.

The value delivered by Macquarie was immediate. “Macquarie has the experts and professionals to manage the complicated stuff, so we don’t have to worry about it and we’ve got a dedicated team that are a phone call away” says Steve. In partnership with Macquarie Cloud Services, Holman Webb were able to propel their digital transformation, with a proactive IT approach that now only requires a 5-minute morning check on system availability. Steve continues “We’re now seen as a profit centre rather than a cost centre and we’ve normalised a digital-first culture here that has huge benefits to our clients.”

Macquarie Cloud Services’ industry-leading Net Promoter Score (NPS) was also demonstrated, considering the recent sudden shift to working remotely. Steve explains “We had to make an immediate decision to send our entire workforce home. Within 15 minutes of making a phone call to Eduardo (Holman Webb’s dedicated SDM) he was able to turn on split tunnelling VPN resulting in our workforce being able to work online immediately. It is this level of service that I have come to expect from Macquarie Cloud Services.”

Accelerated digital transformation journey.

Macquarie Cloud Services have successfully forged a partnership with Holman Webb which has been instrumental in their accelerated digital transformation journey. This partnership allows Holman Webb: