Adding Value is a Merseyside-based company offering a full suite of financial and accountancy services to charities, social enterprises, and values-driven businesses. Growing with pace at around 30% a year, and with 100+ clients to service and support, the company realised that its IT infrastructure was limiting its ability to grow and operate safely.
The Adding Value team loves working with organisations that share their passion to make the world a better place. As a socially driven business, they strive to add value for their clients in many ways. When selecting a new long-term IT support company, it was important that their chosen provider shared similar values.
They not only turned to The PC Support Group for managed support services, but also to update and strengthen their IT infrastructure to provide collaborative ways of working and improved levels of cybersecurity to safeguard their own data and that of their clients.
Adding Value are a purpose-led accountancy practice and financial management consultancy that’s in a niche of their own, dedicated to supporting charities, social enterprises, and fellow purpose -led businesses to have strong finances so that they can grow and be financially sustainable.
The company was born out of a need for more ethical, sustainable finance and accounting services. Matthew Brown, founder, and CEO realised that there was a lack of financial knowledge, experience & skills in the sector, with many organisations reliant on undertrained internal staff members or on an accountancy practice that didn’t understand how purpose-led organisations are driven.
The company is working to fill that gap not only through normal accountancy practice services like annual accounts, tax returns and payroll, but by being finance business partners providing financial strategy, financial reporting, and support with decision-making for their clients.
As a purpose-driven organisation, values are critical to the company. Alignment of standards and ethos is vital when it comes to any collaboration, and prospective partners must have a strong focus on quality and customer service standards. Only by consistently doing the right thing can you build reputation, and that's how pretty much the majority of Adding Value’s work has come, via personal recommendations.
“As a values-led organisation I check out our suppliers before we do anything. The PC Support Group’s values were part of the decision in choosing to work with them - a local company with similar principles to ours.
Because we trust The PC Support Group with our IT systems, if we see a client of ours who has a weakness in their IT environment, we say, “We've got a supplier that we trust, and we recommend them to you.””
Matthew Brown, Founder and CEO, Adding Value
It was the company’s rapid growth that led to Matthew Brown becoming increasingly concerned about the company’s IT capacity, capability, and vulnerability. At that point, the company’s IT infrastructure consisted of storing client information on Microsoft OneDrive.
In a world where financial data is a prime target for hackers, and where trust and security are critical to Adding Value’s business relationships, any data breach could lead to devastating reputational damage. As you’d expect, with a company providing complex management accounts, financial strategy, and financial reporting, shoring up the security and collaborative flexibility of the system they were fast outgrowing was paramount. They recognised this need and wanted to collaborate with a partner who could update and strengthen their IT infrastructure and cybersecurity to safeguard their own data and that of their clients, as well as implement robust, collaborative ways of working which strengthen their sustainability goals.
The company needed an IT partner. But not just any IT partner. For what was also important was the need for an ongoing relationship with a company with shared values. Matthew openly admits to checking out potential suppliers before entering into any relationship.
Which is where The PC Support Group came into the picture. A local company that could show them the way to more financial IT resilience and cybersecurity. Creating a safe and secure shared environment for everybody.
The PC Support Group crafted a comprehensive, step-by-step transition strategy to securely integrate Adding Value into its managed IT support and proactive maintenance programme. As part of this procedure, a thorough examination of the company's current IT hardware and software pinpointed areas where wise investment in equipment upgrades and enhancements could establish a resilient and dependable infrastructure foundation.
Expanding upon Adding Value’s prior commitment to Microsoft 365 services, The PC Support Group also managed the transition to the more stable, secure, and controllable SharePoint file-sharing environment. Following consultations, all documents underwent evaluation, categorisation, and migration to the cloud, where they are now easily accessible for collaborative work by team members, regardless of their location.
Then, to improve Adding Value’s security stance, further cyber-security improvements were made, such automatic software patch-updates and the adoption of Multi-Factor Authentication.
“The PC Support Group approach was very much handholding, helping guide us through the project. We can now feel confident as an accounting practice that our data is secure. Which obviously means our clients data is safe.”
Matthew Brown, Founder and CEO, Adding Value
Transitioning the company from a situation where vital data was stored on a restrictive OneDrive configuration to Microsoft SharePoint has transformed the way the Adding Value team and their clients collaborate. It is safe, swift, effective, transparent, and easy to use, whether they’re working in the office or remotely. The efficacy of the SharePoint implementation is a major tick in terms of Adding Value’s sustainability goals, reducing the need for power-hungry on-site servers and by using Teams and SharePoint collaboration tools, reducing the carbon footprint associated with physical on-site meetings.
These are benefits that are being exploited by many companies implementing Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. The key differentiator for Adding Value is in the relationship with The PC Support Group, and the way two customer-service-led companies do business together, resulting in a true, trusted partnership.
When Matthew started his journey to find an IT partner, he knew he wouldn’t do business with any company that didn’t align with Adding Value’s principles. Since they started working together he’s seen first-hand how The PC Support Group’s people-first way of doing business and their own F.I.R.S.T. set of values (Freedom of expression, Integrity, Respect, Shared commitment, and Trust) work in practice. Matthew went on to say, “The PC Support Group know that it’s not just the work they do that’s important, but it’s the way they approach and conduct that work.”
Phil Bird, CEO of The PC Support Group, responded by saying, “We love working with organisations that have the same values and work ethics as we do, and we set store by the great relationship we have with all our clients, partners, and suppliers. And there’s no better example of this than the work we do, together, with Adding Value. Not only does our client trust us implicitly, they regard the work we do highly enough to keep referring us to their own clients, because what we achieve together adds value to their own clients and their client relationships.”
Would we recommend The PC Support Group to our clients? We've already referred several. We would never make a recommendation or a referral unless we had complete confidence in the company, its values and its impact on our brand and reputation.
Over and above the core services that we offer our clients, as a trusted advisor, being able to recommend The PC Support Group adds value to our service and to our business.”
