One day it was business as usual at Kreston Reeves. The next, accountants and CPAs at the London-based financial services firm were rearranging spare bedrooms and cleaning off dining room tables to comply with a government-issued work-from-home mandate sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the not-too-distant future, many will return to the office and get back into the field.
Regardless of where they choose to work, Kreston Reeves will be ready to deliver a consistent experience that keeps them engaged and productive thanks to a forward-thinking strategy and technology from Citrix Systems, Inc.
Planning for the Future
For more than a decade, Kreston Reeves has been using Citrix digital workspace solutions, including Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops™, and Citrix ADC™ to provide its team with flexibility in when, where and how they work. The solutions serve as the foundation of the firm’s business continuity plan and proved invaluable when the pandemic hit.
“We’d never had to test our plan to its limits,” said Chris Madden, IT & Operations Director, Kreston Reeves. “But in the week before the Prime Minister ordered employees to work from home, we performed two scale up exercises to see how our Citrix solution would work.”
And the results were impressive. “We were able to increase our remote user load from 50 to 600 and had everybody working from home within 24 hours,” Madden recalls.
Reimagining Work
Delivered as part of Citrix Workspace™, Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops enables organizations to serve up personalized access to the systems, information and tools their employees need to do their best work in one, unified experience and dynamically apply security policies based on a user’s behavior and environment. This allows employees to work when, where and how they want with the confidence that their applications, information and devices are safe.
And, Kreston Reeves is using it to unlock the creativity of its team and fuel innovation that can drive its business forward.
“COVID-19 has not only enabled us to see how easily we were able to transition to working remotely, but also revealed that our financial advisors and accountants could adapt very quickly,” said Andrew Griggs, Senior Partner, Kreston Reeves. “Creative employees have implemented new ways of solving traditional problems that will help us fine-tune and accelerate some strategic initiatives to better serve our clients as we go forward.”
One example Griggs points to is audits, which prior to the pandemic were conducted on-site. “Health-conscious remote workers surmised that more of the audit work could be conducted remotely than ever before,” he said. “Rather than spending a great deal of time at client locations, they leveraged technology to get 90 to 95 percent of things completed before leaving home.”
Boosting Engagement and Productivity
And, this has led to an increase in both engagement and productivity as employees can focus on meaningful work that inspires them and creates value for the clients they serve. “Team members don’t have to process things on-site, so they will have more time to act as trusted advisors providing well-thought-out management advice that will help clients run their business in a better way,” Griggs said.
Embracing Hybrid Models
Like many organizations around the world, Kreston Reeves is coming to terms with the reality that work in the future will look very different than it has in the past and that it will need to adapt to accommodate new work styles.
“We have people working from home several days per week, others who want to have more contact with colleagues and return to the office, and some who want WeWork sites,” Griggs said. “So we’re constantly evaluating new experiences and requests.”
Delivering a Consistent Experience
Regardless of where they work, employees need a workspace that provides a consistent experience that minimizes distractions and interruptions from a myriad of apps and collaboration channels so they can think, create and explore, and work the way they want. And with Citrix, Kreston Reeves can deliver it.
“There is no difference when working at home,” Madden says. “Employees log in to the same desktop with exactly the same software and do exactly the same thing. Location has absolutely no impact on users’ ability to work productively.”
“With the security capabilities that are built-in to Citrix, we’re able to protect our corporate data and apps from threats lurking on employee-owned devices,” Madden said. “Because security is transparent to the user, remote workers have the same positive employee experience that they have when working in the office.”
Kreston Reeves joins more than 400,000 companies around the world who use Citrix solutions to power a better way to work. Click here to learn more about the transformation they are driving and results they are delivering.
