Introduction
For more than 23 years, Raleigh, North Carolinabased Alpha Accounting has been setting up systems for businesses large and small to track cash, inventory and critical processes. Founder and CEO Leslie Hamm’s business philosophy is to: record the “now”, plan for the future, and learn from the past. A leading solution provider for QuickBooks accounting software, QuickBooks Payments, Payroll and service, Alpha Accounting sets up systems to help clients set, track and achieve goals.
The Challenge
The Alpha Accounting team is composed of a remote workforce that is reliant on a consistent, accessible and robust hosting platform. “Some of us travel quite a bit, so we need the ability to easily log in wherever we are and have access to our company procedures and backup documentation, all housed in one place.” Over the years, the firm had used two hosting providers and frequently encountered disruptions related to outages and non-responsive customer support. The situation came to a critical juncture while at an industry conference, when the Alpha Accounting team found itself in the midst of yet another days-long outage.
The Solution
“I came to Rightworks, which happened to be exhibiting at the same conference, in this emergency situation,” said Leslie. “Our hosting company had completely left us in the dark during a four-day outage, so I went to the Rightworks team and said, ‘I need help’.” Rightworks immediately exceeded her expectations, setting up the account on-site and, within days of returning from the conference, Rightworks had all of Alpha Accounting’s 100+ users up and running.
The Results
Leslie’s goal with moving to Rightworks was to achieve ease of use for both clients and employees, as well as consistent access to all data, whether it was QuickBooks data, additional applications, or other stored documents. “The Rightworks platform has really changed the value that we provide to our clients by giving more clients access to their data at any point and allowing us to provide support to our clients without the need for an on-site visit or a remote meeting.”
Leslie had some concerns that their long-term clients, some of whom had been with the company for 15+ years, would be a bit shaken transitioning to yet another hosting company. Fortunately, her fears were unfounded, as Rightworks made sure all clients understood what the transition would look like and accommodated any and all unique client requests. One such request, which had been turned down by their previous two hosting companies, came from a client with a unique structure and location limitations.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge, but our account team had been so great that we took this request to them to ask if it was even possible,” said Leslie. “The Rightworks team worked extremely hard, and it took some time, but they’ve made it work. They understand that some of our clients require extra support and they’re willing and able to make sure that all of our clients are well-served. It’s exciting to have a partner like Rightworks that we can bring a challenge to and they always accept the challenge and work through it.”
She also notes that workflows have greatly improved since using Rightworks. In the firm’s previous hosting environment, they had to use a different log-in for Pro and Premier clients versus Enterprise clients. “Now everything is all in one place, so my team only has one log-in and we’re able to add additional applications very easily. The team also really likes the self-managing platform because we can easily dedicate different services or applications to different users, which has been great.”
The Alpha Accounting team also appreciates having Rightworks manage all of the technical updates and backups for their clients, which Leslie says provides “tremendous peace of mind.” Overall, Leslie has found Rightworks to be a reliable, forward-thinking technology partner that provides exceptional customer service. “One of the things we really appreciate about Rightworks is that they have our backs.”
Watch this short video for more about how Leslie and her team have delivered more value with Rightworks.