[1]Having split from Pannone LLP through a management buyout of the majority of the commercial/corporate practice of that firm in February 2014, Pannone Corporate [2] had a busy first 12 months establishing its new brand, finding a new office and securing key clients and staff.
Formed to focus purely on corporate and commercial work, the firm moved all of its staff and partners into the Castlefield Chapel in Manchester, a grade 2 listed converted chapel once owned by Pete Waterman of Stock Aitken & Waterman fame, and the former recording studio of the so called Hit Factory, in February 2015.
The firm retained the staff, partners and clients it needed to succeed and has won some exciting new client mandates in its first 12 months including Iceland Frozen Foods, Select Service Partners and NG Bailey.
The firm also gained recognition for the number of deals it acted on during the first quarter of 2015 in Experian’s Top 20 UK legal adviser table.
Having successfully established the new firm, managing partner Paul Jonson and chairman Steven Grant turned their attention to creating leaner and more nimble support functions. IT was a key function to review.
Paul explains: “We wanted to ensure we had an efficient and cost-effective IT model in place. One that provided our teams with the service, reliability and security to deliver our solutions quickly and efficiently to clients.”
After looking at the options available, the management team decided to outsource IT and chose Converge TS [1]following a competitive tender.
“For us, Converge had a track record in the legal sector and demonstrated experience of hosting case management and digital dictation applications. The team at Converge understood our compliance requirements and they contracted on transparent service level guarantees.
“We believed they were able to deliver IT support in a flexible and cost-effective way, and they are a proven operator in our sector.”
Converge TS [1] now provides Pannone Corporate with a fully managed hosted desktop (cloud) service [3]. “As a result of this, we now have more people in our new office whose job it is to focus solely on client work,” Paul explains.
Paul concludes: “IT is one of those functions in a law firm that when you aren’t aware of it, then it means it is working well. We look forward to developing our relationship with Converge and helping to further improve the service we deliver to our many clients.”