Web application is a sound investment for Prestwood Software

Prestwood provides comprehensive Financial Planning software. It includes client facing and practice management modules which interlink to show a client a projection of their financial future, opportunities and challenges. Many of the UK’s most successful lifestyle financial planners, leading networks, accountancy firms and legal practices are on the company’s client list.

It continues to pioneer innovative, accurate and user friendly products to extend the functionality, flexibility and compatibility of its software.

Issue

The software that had been developed at Prestwood was designed as an on-premise solution, installed by each customer on their own servers or individual machines as required. The task of supporting the servers on which the software was installed was becoming an obstacle to supporting the software itself.

The senior management team recognised the benefits to their clients of transforming the software into a web based application. This would allow users to access the application using a dedicated URL, simply entering a secure user name and password to get instant access; importantly, with any device, from anywhere, at any time.

Prestwood were equally clear on what they did not want; expensive servers sitting in customers’ offices, ongoing hardware maintenance or the need to undertake regular internal backups. The intention was to ensure all Prestwood clients have exactly the same user experience, but without having to make any changes to their IT infrastructure.

Solution

To achieve the right solution and satisfy the company’s ambition, the desired result could have been reached by Prestwood spending a lot of time and money re-writing their entire software range for the new hosted environment.

Given the need to transform their offering quickly, to remain at the forefront of providing financial planning software, a practical alternative was sought.

Following a period of intensive investigation and time spent understanding the business, Quiss Technology recommended that Prestwood switch from their current on-premise solution to an Application Deployment Platform (ADP).

This would allow them to host their applications and make them available to clients, without users having to make any changes to their own infrastructure.

The platform would make the software available as it currently exists, without any re-write or new code having to be added. And it allows the transition to a hosted environment to happen very quickly.

Independent Software Vendors (ISV) like Prestwood, require hosting partners that provide the infrastructure capable of delivering their applications, but with the flexibility of service that allows a dedicated or shared solution dependant on the ISV’s preference. We design each solution to address a different set of unique needs, mixing public, hybrid and private hosting.

A dedicated infrastructure can be created for the sole use of an ISV to enable them to slice and dice for its customers, or if they wish, they can utilise our shared infrastructure to deliver the same applications. Software as a Service (SaaS) typically lends itself to the shared infrastructure model, purely because user counts can be increased or decreased without any further capital investment.

We are very flexible with our approach to working with ISVs. We can act as the ISV Partner and allow the client to determine their own level of costing, become the ISV and provide fee income or white label our services as the ISV’s own solution.

Benefits

The installation of a web based application to replace the company’s existing hardware system has helped Prestwood to change the way they work and the service they offer their customers. It has made the company’s software easier to sell, easier to use and easier to manage.

A simple upload to the Quiss platform, ensures all the necessary changes are implemented for every user, without them lifting a mouse. Prestwood can now spend time developing their innovative software, rather than re-writing it, helping consolidate and streamline its processes to improve efficiency.

Thanks to our ability to ensure access to our hosting service has the look and feel of each client’s application, the new hosted Prestwood application is identical in appearance to the original on-premise version.

This provides end users with confidence and means no training is required as they will notice no change in the application environment or user experience
when using the new system.

We expect to help many other ISVs make the successful move to the Cloud like Prestwood, addressing their unique needs with a dedicated mix of public, hybrid and private hosting solutions.