Challenge

Boulay wanted to move its engagement files from its data center to the cloud to improve security, operational flexibility and scalability.

Solution

Boulay chose to store its Caseware Working Papers data on Caseware Cloud, a secure, integrated platform designed to meet all the engagement, analytics and practice management needs of accounting professionals.

Results

The Boulay technology team moved approximately 40,000 Working Papers files to Caseware Cloud in less than four months, smoothly and securely.

“With Caseware Cloud, we can add additional layers of security to our client data and open the door to new technologies that are on the horizon.”

Jadin Bragg

Partner, Boulay

Company profile

Boulay is a Minnesota-based independent accounting firm with offices in Minnesota and Florida. In business since 1934, Boulay has approximately 300 employees across the U.S., including more than 40 partners and over 100 CPAs. Boulay is a member of PrimeGlobal, an association of independent accounting firms operating in more than 112 countries, allowing the company to access expertise from almost anywhere in the world.

Boulay offers clients a wide range of services including accounting advisory, assurance, business consulting, employee benefit plan (EBP) auditing, risk advisory, tax and wealth management. The firm’s areas of expertise include such industries as construction, real estate, renewable energy, retail, manufacturing, professional services, search funds, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and wholesale.

Challenge

Boulay began using Caseware Working Papers to manage its engagements in 2004. At the time, the firm had looked at other solutions and determined Working Papers was the best fit for its team, said Jadin Bragg, Partner with Boulay. In particular, the firm liked how CaseView, a tool that’s part of the Working Papers suite, handled document creation, as opposed to other products that linked information back to Microsoft Word and Excel files.

Over the years, Boulay’s Working Papers went through different iterations. In 2012, the firm implemented SmartSync with VPN, and in 2016, migrated to SmartSync Server with its Working Papers parent files stored at its data center. SmartSync Server provided team members with the seamless ability to work from anywhere. 

Most recently, in 2022, Boulay’s data center contract was coming up for renewal, along with significant hardware replacement costs. 

“We had a choice to make,” said Dana Bormann, Director of Learning and Development at Boulay. “Either we invested in the status quo, renewing our data center contract and investing in new hardware, or we could invest in the cloud and a change for the future. We knew the cloud was the direction we ultimately needed to go, so we decided it was the perfect time to make the shift.”

The cloud offered Boulay several potential benefits, including superior security, more refined file access permissions, API capabilities and the ability to explore new Caseware cloud solutions for the future. 

Solution

Boulay began migrating its Working Papers files from its data center to Caseware Cloud in September 2022. Caseware Cloud is a secure, integrated platform designed to deliver all the engagement, analytics and practice management needs of accounting professionals. It offers easy collaboration and connectivity, making it simpler to work with colleagues and clients. Boulay’s new hybrid environment allows the firm to benefit from the cloud’s flexibility and security, while still working in the familiar Working Papers platform.

By December 2022, in less than four months, Boulay had finished its cloud migration, successfully moving approximately 40,000 files. Only about 200 files weren’t able to migrate and needed to be published to the cloud manually. “It was a very smooth transition for us,” Bormann said. “When we moved to SmartSync Server back in 2016, we did a lot of file cleanup, so our data was already in good shape.”

Careful planning and preparation by the Boulay team was another reason for the successful migration. Boulay has a dedicated IT team, as well as a learning and development department, dedicated to enhancing the firm’s operational effectiveness by providing practice area technology solutions, process development, procedural resources and customized learning plans and training offerings. 

“Over time we’ve shifted from having accountants trying to manage our technology and processes to having various departments handle them,” Bragg said. “We don’t just put the technology in place and hope it works. We really try to think things through.”

When implementing technology, Boulay involves pilot team members from different departments across the firm to help the technology team better understand how new solutions can improve operations. “We want to make sure we’re moving in the right direction, so we make sure we put in the time and get any technology rollouts done effectively and efficiently,” Bragg said.

Results

The move to Caseware Cloud has given Boulay a flexible, secure platform that delivers a range of benefits. Along with the continued ease for staff to work from anywhere, Bormann said these include:

• Single sign-on – Boulay staff can now log into their engagement files with a single login. This means staff don’t need to remember multiple passwords and makes it simpler for administrators to manage any account issues, such as password resets.

• Multi-factor authentication – Boulay set up multi-factor authentication with Caseware Cloud to make access to its stored files more secure. Users need a password, as well as a code sent to their mobile device, to access files stored in the cloud.

• Encryption of files at rest – All data stored in Caseware Cloud is encrypted using the industry-standard AES-256 algorithm, the same level of encryption used by banks. This means that even if an outside party was able to access Boulay’s data, they wouldn’t be able to read it.

• Better file access permissions – Boulay had been managing access permissions for its staff through Caseware Working Papers’ Data Store administration tool. Staff were assigned to global groups so they had the appropriate permissions for the work they needed to do. If Boulay needed a restricted access group, they set up those groups in Data Store. “As our workforce expanded with employees working from multiple locations across the U.S., modifying restricted access permissions in the locally stored Data Store administration tool became more challenging.” Bormann said. “Caseware Cloud has facilitated how we manage permissions, which is critical now that we have employees geographically dispersed in more than 30 U.S. states along with offshore contractors. We now have a feasible means of accomplishing least-privileged access, which is ideally what we need to have.” In a least-privileged access environment, staff have the minimum level of access they need to perform their jobs, meaning fewer people have access to sensitive files.

The future

In addition to Working Papers, Boulay relies on Caseware IDEA data analysis software to help identify trends, patterns and outliers to enhance risk management and create more detailed insights. 

The firm is evaluating Caseware Sherlock and the OnPoint suite of products from Caseware, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AIPCA) and CPA.com.

Sherlock is an accounting practice intelligence platform that identifies trends and insights for client advisory and internal process improvements. Boulay is already seeing the offering’s benefits from its evaluation period. “With Sherlock’s dashboards, we can bring up the status of files quickly,” Bragg said. “This could significantly strengthen our project management capabilities in the future.”

Boulay is also testing the OnPoint product family, beginning with OnPoint EBP, a cloud-based integrated methodology and software solution designed to enable firms to improve the efficiency and quality of their employee benefit plan audits. The firm plans to test OnPoint EBP with some pilot engagements. Bragg noted that while some initial up-front investment in time and learning is required, “with our technology solutions, we have found that if we invest the time, it has always turned out well.”

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