Acumen Republic provides world-leading advice to some of New Zealand’s most influential leaders and organisations.
With offices in Auckland and Wellington, the company is known for in-depth research and insights on important issues like pay equity and diversity.
In 2013, Acumen faced a familiar scenario for the time. Their fixed stack of physical servers and legacy systems was a source of high operating costs, an inflexible work set-up and barriers to staff working remotely.
The usual solution at the time would have been to upgrade the existing system. But true to their position as thought leaders, Acumen took a different approach.
First to cloud
In 2013, Acumen chose Fusion as their new IT partner.
The brief: Develop an IT solution that was simple, flexible, robust and cost effective - all backed up by rapid support when required. And, in a radical step for the time, Acumen was more than willing to move to the cloud. Which is exactly what we did for them.
First we used remote desktop services to migrate Acumen to Cloud Office (and later Office 365). The immediate effect was to provide staff with 24/7 access to their Nimbus CRM and financial software whether at home, in the office, or visiting clients. We also set-up private WAN, improved internet and backup services supported by a suite of hand-picked apps, and shifted staff from desktops to laptops.
Fast, reliable – and community minded too
Today, Acumen continues to operate with this model, which supports regular updates at a fraction of the cost they would have once paid. Gone are the days when reliability, speed and response times were an issue.
And while the cloud model is now universally known, Acumen will forever be among the handful of first movers in New Zealand’s to recognise the competitive edge it could provide.
As for their old equipment, it was still usable in the right environment. So Acumen donated it to Christchurch’s Linwood College, a low-decile school impacted badly by the earthquakes. In keeping with our passion for education, we also provided 33 desktops, three laptops, nine universal docking stations and three multimedia keyboards.
“Since Fusion started looking after Acumen, and particularly since we moved to the Cloud and then laptops, we have been more stable than ever. We have greater reliability, speed, and response times. Fusion understands our needs, and nothing is too much trouble.”
Mandy Hancock, Acumen Director and Chief Financial Officer