Legal Case Studies

Harper Macleod LLP: Case Study



Sector/Main Activities: 

Legal 


Location: 

Scotland-wide

Click to view pdf format of Harper Macleod LLP case study

The Background

Harper Macleod is a leading independent Scottish law firm with offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Lerwick and Thurso. The firm offers a full range of commercial and personal legal services across Scotland, the UK and further afield, and the organisation was voted Scotland’s 2016 Law Firm of the Year. 

Working in conjunction with Liquidware Labs partner Capito Ltd, a leading IT services and solutions company, Harper Macleod embarked on a large project to deliver nextgeneration desktops – physical, virtual and mobile – to provide its 350+ users with the tools they need to work in the most efficient and secure manner possible. Harper Macleod were upgrading the operating system across its physical estate as well as rolling out VMware Horizon for agile workers. 

The desktop project had very specific goals, more than 50 percent of which were related to delivering a high-quality, positive user experience. Among these goals were to provide: 

  • Substantially quicker time from login to initial application use; Outlook was the barometer for the success of this objective
  • A quicker, more stable experience from any location on any Harper Macleod PC
  • An identical user experience from any PC in any office as well as when working remotely
  • The capacity to work anywhere, at any time, on any device
  • A quicker, more stable remote working experience
  • True hot-desking between offices, with quick login times.

One of the significant challenges of upgrading operating systems is migrating the data and settings stored in users’ profiles. Roaming profiles are not compatible across Windows versions, and redundant settings accrue over time. Harper Macleod Senior Technical Support Analyst Matthew Thomas explained, “ProfileUnity simplified the migration of profiles, as it treats the profiles identically regardless of the operating system. We also had years and years of historical, unmanaged profile data, such as settings for applications no longer in use.”.


The Solution

Mr Thomas continues, “In ProfileUnity, I built a set of rules that backed up only useful settings, and when users logged in to their upgraded Windows desktop, ProfileUnity integrated the old settings into their new profile. It’s a very slick way of conducting a tidy up as well as a migration. If we had taken everything over from the old profiles, it would have been unmanageable.” 

Mr. Thomas also likes the fact that ProfileUnity enables simplification of desktop management. “Being able to manage one configuration for both physical and virtual desktops saves a lot of time. This wouldn’t have been possible without ProfileUnity,” he said.


The Outcome

Post deployment, Harper Macleod surveyed their users to gather data and metrics on the success of the project. With more than 90 percent of users opening Outlook as the first action they take after logging in to their PCs, there was keen interest in seeing any improvement, as this goal was a major ‘barometer’ for success of the project. Previously, more than 80 percent of users reported a login time of more than five minutes. Now more than 45 percent of those users report being able to complete a full process of logging in, starting Outlook and sending an email, in less than one minute. 

ProfileUnity has delivered on its part of the project goals. “On both physical and virtual desktops, ProfileUnity has enabled substantially quicker time from login to initial application use. The solution has provided more stability and an identical end user experience, whether they are working from one of our offices or remotely,” commented Richard Harvey, IT Director at Harper Macleod. “Liquidware Labs has helped us to achieve a number of our key goals laid down for our desktop project, such as quicker remote working, true hot-desking and seamless user experience across all devices.” With many of Mr. Harvey’s users classified as ‘fee earners’, the time saved with quicker logins can have a direct benefit for Harper Macleod. 

In conclusion, Mr. Harvey states, “The end result of this two-year project is that we have vastly improved login times across the business. We also now provide true hot-desking on quicker, more stable, more secure workspaces that deliver consistent user experience across both physical and virtual desktops. ProfileUnity has been an absolutely essential element in achieving these project goals. Moving forward it will allow us to be far more agile in implementing new applications and OS builds.”

“ProfileUnity has enabled substantially quicker time from login to initial application use. 

The solution has provided more stability and an identical end-user experience, whether they are working from one of our offices or remotely.”


Richard Harvey, IT Director 

Harper Macleod