FACTS AT A GLANCE
Industry
Legal
Challenges
Benefits
Background
Bond, Schoeneck & King is a full-service Am Law 200 law firm serving individuals, companies, and public-sector entities. With 300 lawyers and 15 U.S. offices, the firm represents clients in manufacturing, agribusiness, commercial lending, commercial real estate, construction, energy, health care, long-term care, municipalities, school districts, higher education, and other exempt and nonprofit organizations.
Bond’s IT team is responsible for managing and securing hundreds of connected devices, including laptops, tablets, desktops, and virtual machines. The high stakes of client cases, confidential information, and the rapid pace of work make these devices mission-critical to keep secure and operational. At the same time, Bond’s IT team strives to provide 24/7 “white-glove service to end users, meaning that support phone calls must be answered without exception, emails must be returned within hours, and users’ machines are completely operational.
Our end users expect white-glove service from our IT team. Our client work is incredibly important, and the Bond staff relies on these connected devices and dozens of apps to perform when they need them.
- Jim Upwood
Manager of Security and Infrastructure
Like most law firms, Bond used point-in-time solutions to rebuild machines, identify necessary software and security updates, package them appropriately for each device, and push them out to hundreds of endpoints. Despite those tools, the process stubbornly remained labor-intensive, requiring the equivalent of half of a full-time employee. More importantly, software updates and security patches were often unsuccessful. The team had inadequate visibility into those failures until a device had an issue that led to an urgent help desk ticket.
Bond tried to address this need by hiring a managed service provider (MSP) to augment the law firm’s in-house team. Unfortunately, the provider did not deliver on its promises, and the number of applications it could update was a fraction of what was required. Due to these limitations, Bond’s IT team continued the labor-intensive custom patching needed to keep its computers running. With this MSP, Bond’s IT team was not improving the success rates of software delivery and security patches.
Wanting a partner that could deliver on the promise of simpler, faster, more successful security updates and computer imaging, Bond found Aiden. Aiden deployed its endpoint management solution to complement Bond’s existing endpoint management systems, and the impact of Aiden’s hyperautomation has been dramatic.
In the past, we would be called upon to help with many IT issues because devices didn’t have the latest, greatest version of software updates and patches. Our team would respond rapidly to get them into their desired states, but we wanted a process that was far more proactive and automated.
– Jim Upwood
Producing Actionable Results
Reduced Imaging Time by 75% & Eliminated Critical Application Packaging
Once Aiden’s onboarding process was complete, Bond’s IT team had immediate relief from their patching nightmares and saw a decrease in imaging time from three hours to 40 minutes. Aiden quickly added approved applications and rapidly ensured Bond’s specialized legal apps were packaged and available to be deployed. Bond’s team feels the support provided by Aiden was exceptional and made the transition to a new provider easy.
Aiden is a paradigm shift in the way legal endpoints are managed. Deciding to take a chance on something so innovative was not easy, but after taking the leap, I’ve never looked back.
– Jim Upwood
Save Thousands of Dollars by Eliminating Unnecessary Tools & Services
Bond was able to reduce costs and streamline its IT process by replacing one MSP and two tools that were no longer needed: a software deployment tool and a security patching tool, collectively costing $120,000 per year. By switching over to Aiden, the firm could re-purpose the leftover budget and management resources, which reduced the stress the team was experiencing.
Because we could eliminate some tools and replace them with Aiden helped make the decision to invest even easier.
– Jim Upwood
30% Improved Reduction in Security Vulnerabilities
Using Aiden, Bond improved its reduction in security vulnerabilities by 30-40% in the first 60 days – a significant metric given that Bond’s IT team was already achieving high numbers based on their weekly scans and consistent focus on patching.
The fact that Aiden achieved a reduction this high on top of our high benchmark is remarkable. It proves how effective Aiden is at finding and fixing things that other tools and processes missed.
– Jim Upwood
Reduced Complexity and Improved Visibility
Because Aiden keeps the firm’s security policy in plain English and maintains contextual, real-time reports in AidenVision, Bond’s IT team has a quick, reliable, and easy-to-understand reference for how each Windows machine managed by Aiden is configured. Since Bond runs AidenBot daily, it has had a profound impact on daily operations by reducing complexity and enabling the IT team to identify and quickly remediate issues proactively.
The consistency of our patching improved so quickly. I know that when I run the AidenBot, every device will be successfully checked for its desired configuration state and updated if they are not. AidenVision also gives me the kind of visibility into device statuses that I always wanted.
– Jim Upwood
Time Back for High-Value Projects
Because Aiden supports many legal-specific applications, Bond has freed up their IT team’s valuable time to tackle important projects that were put aside to fill the gaps created by their previous MSP. By filling these gaps and automating labor-intensive tasks like software packaging and deployment, Aiden has given the IT team time to work on a significant always-on VPN project that had been on hold for two years. The team also has had more time to establish a virtual desktop initiative in Azure and work on the firm’s long-term IT strategy.
Aiden frees our IT team from tedious, frustrating work so they can work on more interesting projects that move us forward, which makes Bond more attractive for retaining and hiring quality IT people.
– Jim Upwood
Improved White-Glove Service
Bond’s IT team can now provide lawyers and staff better support by proactively identifying and remediating device issues that would otherwise negatively impact workflows. The combined benefits of consistent updating, time savings from reduced imaging time, and increased security mean that each call for support is answered promptly and issues are identified and resolved faster, helping the IT team better deliver on their white-glove service promise. This efficiency from the IT
team means lawyers can get back to serving clients faster.
We have metrics to show Aiden’s impact. But the biggest barometer is that the number of emergency calls and support desk escalations about devices has dropped dramatically, which is a clear sign of our effectiveness in endpoint management. Aiden has become a critical aspect of how we deliver white-glove service to the firm.
– Jim Upwood
