Customer TCO Case Study
/ Windows 7Helps IT Assets Work Smarter, Enhances Revenue Potential at Baker Tilly
Overview
Country or Region:United Kingdom
Industry:Financial services
Customer Profile
With 2,200 employees and over 280 partners, Baker Tilly has annual revenue of £208 million (U.S.$342 million). The company provides accounting and financial services through a network of 29 offices throughout the United Kingdom.
Business Situation
Baker Tilly wanted to migrateto the Windows® 7 desktop operating system to control IT costs and promote the productivity of its fee-generating staff.
Solution
Automated tools and rapid remote access enable Baker Tilly to reduce IT costs and maximize fee-earners’ uptime, enabling more time for fee-generating services.
Benefits
- Annual £37(U.S.$61) per PC desktop deployment cost savings
- Annual £59 ($97) per PC desktop management cost savings
- Annual £20 ($33) per PC in PC power cost savings
- Potential increase in annual billable time worth £425 ($700) per PC
Simon Harding-Rolls, IT Director, Baker Tilly
Leading financial services firm Baker Tilly is one of the first businesses to deploy a solution based on the Windows® 7 desktop operating system on a companywide basis. Significant benefits revealed in a pilot project prompted Baker Tilly to deploy Windows 7 to the entire company as quickly as possible. Windows 7 was deployed throughout the organization by the end of July 2009. By using Windows 7, Baker Tilly expects to reduce labor of ongoing IT tasks and help keep IT resources focused on high-value functions. Benefits include direct IT cost savings averaging £116 (U.S.$191) per PC per year, made possible by improved network access, automated deployment, desktop management tools, and PC power cost savings. In addition, Windows 7 helps ensure that company fee-earners are affected less by common desktop update and support tasks. The business benefits have the potential to recover more than two days of billable time for each mobile worker, representing an estimated £425 (U.S.$700) per PC per year in additional value. The potential value of this business benefit is the equivalent of about one-half of one percent of the company’s current annual gross revenue.
financial services firm Baker Tilly is one of the first businesses to deploy a solution based on the Windows® 7 operating system on a companywide basis. Significant benefits revealed in a pilot project prompted Baker Tilly to quickly deploy Windows 7 throughout the organization before by the end of July 2009. By using Windows 7, Baker Tilly expects to reduce ongoing IT tasks and help keep IT resources focused on high-value functions. Benefits include direct IT cost savings averaging £116 (U.S.$161) per PC per year, made possible by improved network access, automated deployment, desktop management tools, and PC power cost savings. In addition, Windows 7 helps ensure that company fee-earners are less affected by desktop update and support tasks. The business benefits have the potential to recover more than two days of billable time for each mobile worker, representing an estimated £425 ($591) per PC per year in additional value. The potential value of this business benefit is the equivalent of about one-half of one percent of the company’s current annual gross revenue.
Works the way you want
Situation
Like most professional services companies, Baker Tilly maximizes revenue by optimizing the billable time of customer-facing fee earners. The Baker Tilly IT department has a longstanding reputation within the company of helping to drive revenue and achieve other corporate business goals by delivering high-quality IT services.
The Baker Tilly IT effort is led by partner and career IT professional, Simon Harding-Rolls. As company IT Director, Harding-Rolls has built a forward-looking IT culture that is eager to try new approaches that improve IT efficiency, make PC users more productive, and support company business initiatives. With well over 95 percent of users being “information workers,” his goal is to provide customer-facing staff with fully standardized, transparent IT operations that minimize desktop downtime and free them from routine desktop self-help tasks. The desired result: customer-facing workers, who will generate revenue with minimal distractions or interruptions by their IT tools.
As a Baker Tilly partner, Harding-Rolls bases IT investment decisions on his evaluation of the direct impact on company business priorities. In 2008, he reviewed the performance of the company’s desktop computers, which ran on the Windows® XP operating system. He and other Baker Tilly IT managers knew that some parts of the company needed more powerful desktop capabilities; they felt that the Windows 7 operating system could provide the next-generation capabilities that they needed to achieve company business goals.
Solution
Eager to solve these problems and deploy a more powerful desktop operating system, Mr. Harding-Rolls and his IT team evaluated Windows 7 and decided that it would provide a highly capable desktop platform that could help the IT staff to:
- Spend less time deploying PCs
- Expedite time-consuming desktop management tasks
- Deliver effective support for mobile workers’ PCs
- Provide transparent security services
- Reduce PC power costs
- Enhance mobile worker productivity to promote additional revenue
Harding-Rolls comments, “We quickly saw that Windows 7 would give us immediate value by reducing our [IT staff] effort and helping fee-earners spend more time focused on fee-generating tasks. We enthusiastically joined the Windows 7 Technical Adoption Program [TAP], and after a pilot, decided to do a companywide rollout.”
Windows 7 capabilities enable the Baker Tilly IT staff to improve their own productivity and provide fee-earners with powerful, unobtrusive desktop performance that maximizes the time that they spend in revenue-generating tasks.
Less deployment effort and desktop re-building.Before the Windows 7 rollout, deployment, provisioning, and desktop re-imaging were labor-intensive tasks that eroded IT staff productivity. Baker Tilly currently re-images a significant number of computers each year, in addition to new deployments associated with its standard PC refresh cycle. Each time an image is deployed, it costs Baker Tilly IT labor and billable time.
“We consider IT a commodity; the less intrusive it is to PC users, the better. With Windows 7, we can provide software tools that are powerful, transparent, and trouble-free, so we can empower PC users and step out of their way. Maximum capabilities, minimum distractions for our fee-earners. We like that!”Simon Harding-Rolls,
IT Director, Baker Tilly
- Windows 7 capabilities such as Dynamic Driver Provisioning and data hard-linking enable the IT staff to automate many of these tasks and reduce the labor needed to build or re-image a PC by an average of two hours per PC, an improvement of more than 50 percent.
- Less re-imaging effort. Windows 7 has capabilities that will enableBaker Tilly to avoid many re-imaging operations entirely.Features such as Startup Repair, the Windows Recovery Environment, and improvements in System Restore capability mean that Baker Tilly will nearly eliminate IT labor on PCs that can be restored to functionality without re-imaging.
- Single image reducesdesktop complexity.Windows 7 features such as Dynamic Driver Provisioning and multi-language supporthelp the Baker Tilly IT staff significantly reduce the effort and complexity involved in maintaininga single image for their entire IT infrastructure.
- By standardizing on one image, the IT labor involved in image management tasks is reduced by nearly 50 percent. A single image also benefits Baker Tilly by reducing the complexity in its desktop environment, resulting in improvements in PC user experience and service desk metrics.
Together, these improvements in deployment processes are calculated to save Baker Tilly more than £37 (U.S.$61) per PC per year, a 55 percentimprovement in deployment labor costs.
More efficient desktop management.A major goal of the Windows 7 deployment effort was to make ongoing IT operations and management tasks more efficient. By using capabilities of Windows 7, the IT staff will reduce time-consuming desktop management tasks that erode IT staff efficiency and add to downtime for fee-earners.
- Scripting and centralized control expedite desktop management.The Windows PowerShell™2.0 command line shell and scripting languageenable IT staff to spend less time automating and managing desktop administration tasks.
- Centralized control of management operations.Improvements in the Windows Server® 2008 R2operating system and Windows 7 release of Group Policy management tools make it possible to centralize these tasks and customize desktop management of each remote office without increasing operational complexity.
With these and other Windows 7 technologies, IT staff will reduce PC desktop management-related IT labor by an estimated 18percent. The net benefit to Baker Tilly is that this IT effort will be refocused from ongoing manual tasks to higher-value functions, which deliver better quality services to users without increasing costs.
Harding-Rolls notes, “The real story is that Windows 7 delivers great potential to free up our IT resources, so that their efforts can be invested in improved processes. We’ve already gained tremendous value by deploying Windows 7 and expect to gain even more.”
Improved reliability and supportfor mobile workers. Because so many mobile workers are directly involved in revenue-generating tasks, Baker Tilly places a premium on avoiding support issues and resolving them quickly when they occur.
- Fewer problems. Windows 7 provides capabilities that help users avoid many support calls entirely.To help protect users from drifting away from standard configurations, IT staff can rely on greater granularity in Group Policy settings and enhancements in User Account Control. And with reliability improvements such as built-in diagnostics, service hardening, and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), users will have fewer problems.
- More control. In addition, greater granularity in Windows 7 Group Policy settings, along with enhancements in User Account Control, give the IT staff the tools they need to help protect users from drifting away from standard configurations.
- Troubleshooting and support capabilities. Windows 7 providesfeatures such as Windows Troubleshooting,which will enable users to quickly identify and resolve issues, helping to avoid service-deskcalls.If problems do require support from the service desk, the Problem Steps Recorderfeature helps users quickly and accurately communicate with the service desk. In turn, new Windows Troubleshooting capabilities and remote access to reliability and performance data will enable the Baker Tilly service desk staff to quickly diagnose problems. And enhancements in Remote Desktop services will assist in restoring mobile workers to full productivity
.
In combination, these advanced Windows 7 troubleshooting and support improvements enable the Baker Tilly servicedesk staffto spend 17 percentless time diagnosing and resolving desktop issues, a savings estimated to be worth more than £59 (U.S.$97) per PC per year.
Unobtrusive, easier-to-manage security. As a financial services firm, Baker Tilly must provide security for its clients’ data as well as its own. Toward that end, Baker Tilly finds value in a broad array of security enhancements built into Windows 7. These improvements include:
- Data encryption. BitLocker®drive encryption helps ensure that data is secure by providing full-disk encryption on the PC system drive.
- Security compliance. Together with Windows Server 2008 R2, when deployed, the Network Access Protection (NAP) client will help ensure that PCs meet Baker Tilly security standards before they are allowed access to the company network.
- Malware protection. Windows Defender, along with enhanced service hardening, help ensure that malware and spyware cannot succeed in attacking system resources.
While difficult to quantify in terms of IT labor cost savings, the security capabilities built into Windows 7 help Baker Tilly increase levels of protection on every PC in its environment without additional cost.
Power savings that reduce costs and increase corporate goodwill. The Windows 7 operating system helps companies like Baker Tilly manage power consumption on a more granular level. Using Group Policy settings, the IT staff will ensure that PCs optimize power consumption while in use and minimize power consumption at other times, without negatively affecting user productivity.
- Lower power consumption. Conservative estimates indicate that Windows 7 power management will reduce power usage for at least 50 percent of Baker Tilly PCs during off-prime hours and reduce power costs by £20 (U.S.$33) per PC per year across the company.This efficiency represents potential direct savings of more than £43,500 (U.S.$71,520) per year.
- Lower carbon emissions.
In addition, by using Windows 7 capabilities to manage power consumption at the device level, Baker Tilly reduces CO2 emissions and overall carbon footprint throughout the enterprise, an important part of the company’s corporate governance goals.
Improved IT services will help protect mobile worker productivity. The Windows 7 solution provides faster IT support and access to information that maximizes the time that Baker Tilly fee-earners can work with customers.
The Windows 7-based solution enables the Baker Tilly IT staff to reduce the amount of time that fee-earners are adversely affected by IT processes. To Baker Tilly, this means a measurable increase in the number of billable hours that its fee-earners can pursue.
Each Baker Tilly customer-facing workeris unable to work an average of 20 hours a year while their machine is rebuilt, updates are installed, and standard software maintenance tasks take place. In an upcoming deployment phase, the IT staff will be able to help customer-facing workers avoid coming “into the shop” to have their PCs rebuilt, even when the computers are on the Internet but not on the corporate network. DirectAccess, enabled through Windows Server 2008 R2, will enable the IT staff to service and update mobile workers’ PCs as if they were on the company’s local area network (LAN). As a result, mobile workers will be able to recover that time and use it productively on revenue-generating tasks that directly add to the bottom line.
While soft benefits are generally not included in a business case for technology investments, Baker Tilly recognizes that reduction in the amount of time their mobile workers are “down” and not using their PCs as part of their revenue generating work represents a potential increase in the number of billable hours.The company estimates that reducing planned downtime represents a potential revenue increase of £425 (U.S.$700)per PC per year.Harding-Rolls also says, “We place a very high priority on keeping fee-earners productive. Our [IT’s] job is to make their job simple.”
Faster information access adds to user productivity and agility.In addition, Baker Tilly believes that other features in Windows 7 will work to help mobile workers become even more productive. Performance improvements in the operating system itself will help customer-facing workers be more agile as they switch between tasks, and improvements in the user interface, search functionality, and corporate roaming, with access to seamlessly synchronized offline data will help customer-facing workers quickly access the information they need to serve their clients efficiently.
Compelling Results Accelerate Deployment Schedule
All told, these direct and indirect benefits comprise a compelling scenario for Baker Tilly. As a result, the company has become one of the first Microsoft customers to complete a companywide migration to Windows 7. The IT staff planned an aggressive, three-phase migration, which is already underway. The migration includes:
- Stage 1: Deployment of Windows 7 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, which was completed before the end of July 2009.
- Stage 2: Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, which will be installed by the end of November 2009.
- Stage 3: Windows Server 2008 R2-enabled functionality such as DirectAccess and BranchCache™, which will be installed by August 2010.
Mr. Harding-Rolls comments, “We consider IT a commodity; the less intrusive it is to PC users, the better. With Windows 7, we can provide software tools that are powerful, transparent, and trouble-free, so we can empower PC users and step out of their way. Maximum capabilities, minimum distractions for our fee-earners. We like that!”
Benefits
By enabling IT staff to work more efficiently and increasing fee-earner billable time, Windows 7 helpedreduce Baker Tilly IT costs and potentially enabledan increase in the company’s revenue.
A business value analysis was conducted for the three-year Baker Tilly Windows 7 deployment project. Using only direct costbenefits, the results included the following financial returns:
- Net present value of £124 (U.S.$204) per PC
- A 67 percent return on investment
- A 39 percent internal rate of return
- A payback period within 19 months
The cumulative cash flow chart shows the deployment project’s break-even point based only on direct cost benefits.
Higher PC Uptime Recovers Up to 0.5Percent in Potential Revenue
Windows 7 capabilities enable the Baker Tilly IT staff to service customer-facing workers’ PC desktops without bringing their PCs into the shop and to automate PC desktop deployment, provisioning, and re-imaging tasks. As a result, Baker Tilly customer-facing workers get back to work more quickly, minimize service-related downtime, and maximize the time they spend working with customers.