Maxsum Consulting’s relationship with IPSUM Advisors (formerly Stewarts Accountants) dates back to 2003.
Ipsum, a Bendigo based accountancy and wealth advisory firm have an unwavering focus on innovation. Delivering their financial services in accordance with their forward-thinking approach, for Ipsum “good enough isn’t good enough”.
Both Bendigo-born and grown businesses, Maxsum and Stewarts Accountants built a close working relationship based on leveraging each other’s expertise and experience in their respective fields to grow their businesses.
As we now know, the accounting and finance industries were amongst the earliest sectors to experience “disruption” caused by the rapid escalation in the pace of technology change.
Stewarts felt this changing tide early, and faced with increasing complex security, compliance, and reliability requirements, determined that they needed to seek out a strategic technology partnership with a provider that could provide reliable support, forward-thinking advice, strong technology partnerships, and 24/7 continuous support that was not reliant on any single person or system.
We wanted to align ourselves with an IT provider that would take us to the next level. We’re in a disruption industry so we needed to find away to get ahead of the game. It’s good to have a partner where we can say we want to be able to go down this path, how do we make it happen and how quickly can we make it happen.
Jason Pengilley, Director & Partner, IPSUM Advisors
In 2014 Maxsum welcomed Ipsum Advisors as a MaxGuard Plus Managed Services client in 2014, which them gave them access to:
- Strategic business technology advice and consulting
- Always-on IT support both during and after hours
- Cloud technology experts to assist with their proactive move to cloud-based accounting practices
- An IT project team to assist with advancing their business technology roadmap
The continuity and reliability that Managed IT Services provided for IPSUM provided the trusted foundation for IPSUM to undertake some higher-level business technology projects with Maxsum that were designed to position them to embrace the latest cloud-based technologies in the accounting sector and to support their planned growth and expansion into new business offerings.
Over the course of our relationship Maxsum has been proud to partner with and support IPSUM through:
- Transition in leadership with a new generation of highly progressive partners coming on board.
- The relocation and expansion of their office premises to accommodate growth and the adoption of new work processes and technology tools.
- The rebranding and transition of IPSUM from Stewarts Accounting to IPSUM Advisors, and more recently the addition of a Wealth Creation arm to their business.
- Their continuous interest and appetite to explore and adopt next-generation accounting practices and technologies.
More recently Maxsum has worked with IPSUM as their trusted business technology advisor to:
- Recommend, procure, supply and provide training on a range of hardware and software products, especially with their new office premise fit-out.
- Substantially enhance their security posture at a business level to combat the rapid increases in cyber threats rampant in the accounting and finance industry with the installation of enterprise-grade SOPHOS UTMs and antivirus protections.
- Providing ongoing support to assist IPSUM to bolster their security protections as an individual level as well, with in-house security briefings, assisted implementation for Multifactor Authentication (MFA) and policy guidance for their move to Mobile Device Management (MDM).
- Assist IPSUM navigate the move to NBN by strategically assessing their current and future growth, capacity and reliability needs, and assisting with the provisioning of a 50/50 Fibre connection.
- An at-scale, overnight move to remote working during COVID-19, including the strategic roll-out of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams Calling.
With the partnership with Maxsum, it’s helped us to get all our operating systems so systemised and bring everything together – they bring the glue and bind it all together – to give us that leverage and scale. We’ve got the best technology possible, we’re using the best provider we can source and this will continue to be of benefit to us moving forward.
Billy Lacey, Direct & Partner, IPSUM Advisors
Want to hear more about how Managed IT Services, Enterprise-Grade Security and Strategic Business Technology Advice have provided IPSUM Advisors with the surety they need?
Hear it from the IPSUM partners themselves!