Client story ACCA Strengthens Digital Foundations to Drive Future Innovation
By Insight Editor / 20 Dec 2022 / Topics: Modern infrastructure Managed services
Facts at a glance
Client industry
Finance
Story snapshot:
A new modernized technology environment delivered by Insight means that members and students of ACCA, the world’s most widespread and innovative accountancy body, enjoy stronger, more meaningful connections. Diligent planning, implementation and ongoing service management from Insight has enabled ACCA’s digital transformation journey.
- A technology infrastructure that delivers a consistent platform for excellent user experience.
- Insight empowers ACCA to take the next steps in its evolution to become truly digital.
Challenge
Create a consistent, resilient, secure technology infrastructure for a distributed workforce.
Solution
Migration to Microsoft Azure with managed services for infrastructure and workforce solutions
Benefit
Anywhere work enabled with zero disruption and excellent user experiences
Results:
- 6 months to deliver a new environment that ACCA anticipated would take three years.
- 241,000 members enjoy a consistent, excellent user experience.
- 24/7/365 working from any location made possible through the new technology infrastructure.
- Zero disruption meant ACCA continued delivering services through the implementation period.
Background
ACCA is the global professional body for certified accountants. With around 241,000 members and 542,000 future members who support economic growth across 178 countries, it is the world’s most widespread and most innovative accountancy body.
New technology is vital to keep its members informed and is the basis for the organization to provide pertinent and relevant content to them.
Challenge
As a global organization, ACCA needs to be able to interact with its customers anywhere in the world. It wanted to create a consistent, resilient and secure technology infrastructure that enables a unified experience for its employees, allowing them to work from any location, at any time — 24/7, 365 days a year.
ACCA has been going through a digital transformation to continue to be the number one accounting professional body in the world and wanted to improve its IT services to reduce the number of incidents and end-user issues. The simplified architecture would enable ACCA’s IT teams to identify root causes faster and improve the digital experience.
"Insight demonstrated to us throughout the journey that they could help us meet our challenge of being truly digital in a cloud sense. They have the answers, they have the people, and they have the capability.”
– Tony McClelland, CIO, ACCA
"As the person responsible for making the recommendation to our business as to which organization we go with, Insight has been one of my better decisions.”
– Al Gibson, Head of Platform Services, ACCA.
Solution and outcome
The solution Insight delivered combines modern IT architecture with ongoing managed services to oversee and support data center, cloud and workspace operations — including networks, cybersecurity and end-user computing. ACCA anticipated that the transformation would take three years to complete, Insight delivered it in six months.
The move to become a more agile, flexible and digital business involved migrating workloads from the aging on-premises platform to Microsoft Azure. Insight designed the architecture and delivered the migration program, also designing a cloud governance framework using patterns and templates to operate and optimize security in a cloud environment. The Cisco Network and Security infrastructure was provisioned with maximum flexibility in mind, giving ACCA resilient and secure connections to the cloud services.
Within the Azure environment, Insight set up, and now manages, ACCA’s servers and the Microsoft 365 end-user productivity and collaboration tools from Microsoft. The managed, modern desktop environment means all user applications are packaged for remote deployment and management — an important consideration given ACCA’s growing global footprint. Insight delivers a range of services that allows ACCA to provide a consistent experience to its end-users and members across the globe.
Insight’s careful implementation planning enabled ACCA to continue delivering its services throughout the implementation period with zero business disruption and retain its position as the world’s number one professional accounting body.
Why Insight?
ACCA selected Insight as a trusted partner to integrate the technical solutions of a digital transformation with managed services encompassing security, infrastructure, global data center and network cloud services.
Throughout the transformation journey, Insight demonstrated that it had the answers, the people, and the capability to meet the modernization challenges.
ACCA’s Head of IT Commercial & Operational Services, Doug Galt summed up the relationship; “We wanted a trusted partner that could lead us forward and grow with us.” He continues, “Insight brings industry knowledge and innovation to ACCA to challenge our thinking.”
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