Consulting Company - Case Study

In this case study, a targeted mentoring, coaching and training company uses Lockbox to streamline large file sharing and protect highly confidential information.

Acacia Foundry

Acacia Foundry develops and implements training which helps its clients leverage innovation and strengthen their organisations from the inside out. Across HR, health, government, energy, and accounting sectors, Acacia Foundry provides consulting services, facilitation and course content for both online and face-to-face training. In every engagement, Acacia Foundry must uphold stringent practices to keep intellectual property secure.

Challenge

In order to develop custom courses, Acacia Foundry collates information, designs storyboards and GUI designs, deploys files for review, incorporates internal and client feedback and finalises course files ready for client deployment. During this process, documents of all sizes must be prepared, shared and developed confidentially both internally (between its team of consultants) and externally (with clients).

Acacia Foundry is a virtual organisation where employees work remotely yet collaborate closely so a highly secure way to centralise the sharing and storage of documents is imperative. However, as Craig Williams, Director of Acacia Foundry, describes, email was not satisfactory.

"Documents often surpass 10Mb and if we tried to email them, the flow of communication would slow right down and in some cases, breakdown, especially with clients that have strict file filtering restrictions."

To combat this, Acacia Foundry originally tried using a free file sharing service but stopped when information security became a concern.

"We had no idea where the documents were going or the depth of the security of those services so protecting our clients’ information was never totally assured."

Solution

Acacia Foundry turned to Lockbox eBox to simplify and secure their online sharing and collaboration. Issued username and passwords, clients can access and download files of any size that have been compressed and encrypted to maintain the highest levels of security. In its current subscription, Acacia Foundry has an allowance for 20 individual projects, whether they are in-house or for external clients.

Lockbox Benefits

Due to the watertight security of Lockbox, Acacia Foundry is now confident the files they work on are not vulnerable to unauthorised access or computer virus, which in turn reassures, and sometime, secures, their clients. Craig William notes:

"Our public sector-based clients in particular have high security requirements that must be met in order to work with them and they have been very positive about the way in which we exchange electronic information."

The easy login and access to Lock Box has also proven an impressive feature.

"During a new business pitch, we were able to download a large, secure document from Lockbox that had been posted only minutes earlier by one of our team working from another location. It was a great start to our working relationship."

Lockbox has been embedded into the Acacia Foundry website so it appears as the organisation’s own, unique information exchange portal. Said Trinity Ryan, Learning and Development Manager at Acacia Foundry

"By integrating Lockbox into our website, this highly functional and effective tool has been branded our own. It enhances our reputation – and is also very easy to embed."

Ideal for the virtual organisation, Acacia Foundry also uses Lockbox as a central, safe depository for all client and company files. Williams concludes:

"Lockbox is a reliable resource for managing and storing information. Most importantly, we are able to easily collaborate and share large documents with our clients and partners without compromising data privacy, which is pivotal to the success of our business."