Roaming accountants turn to 4G Wi-Fi cradle

Pitcher Partners, an accountancy, auditing and advisory firm, has implemented a 4G Wi-Fi cradle to improve its audit teams’ access to the internet while on the road.

The company is a national association of independent firms, each operating as a separate independent business.

Accountants spend a large amount of time away from the office, with groups often working on-site with their clients. Having secure, fast access to client files and information in this situation is critical for the company.

When employees are sent to site they need a secure, high-capacity network solution. Pitcher Partners’ senior client support technician, Nirav Patel, said the company also needs to lock down the modems, Wi-Fi access and ports so items that may impact network or file security can’t be downloaded.

“Our process is highly secure - a client file is checked out to a host machine which is locked to the users going to the client visit. When they are at the client site everyone networks into that machine and when the host comes back into the office, the file gets checked back onto the network,” Patel said.

The company previously used a 3G wireless product with network capability where team members connected into the switch when working on-site at client offices.

“One problem with our old solution was network coverage. Our former carrier had very patchy coverage, which meant connections dropped out quite regularly. When they came back up, the IP address was different and that caused file corruptions, which was problematic,” Patel said.

“We also had a speed and capacity issue with the 3G product. The apps we have at the moment are resource heavy, they are 2- to 3-gigabyte files and they need really big capacity. In addition, there are often up to 15 people continuously making changes to the same file over a single network.”

Pitcher Partners has deployed a 4G Mobile Wi-Fi and Gateway cradle from Netgear for its audit teams visiting customer sites.

The AirCard Gateway cradle is a hub that turns the AirCard Mobile Broadband 4G device into a Wi-Fi router. The cradle provides a 4G/LTE connection to 16 Wi-Fi devices, four ethernet and two USB devices.

With the cradle, users plug into a network switch, which gets plugged into the cradle and then uses 4G to connect back to Pitcher Partners.

Nirav has made the technology even more accessible for his audit teams, creating an audit tech kit that teams simply pick up on their way out the door. The kit includes a portable scanner, printer, switch, network cables, power boards, the modem and a router. It means there is no need for staff to use client equipment on-site as the kit provides the team with everything they need.

Patel said: “We have a gig switch, so by using the cradle connected to the switch, data transfer is much quicker and it can handle the work more efficiently.

“Teams also don’t have to worry about pass codes for each device, they just plug in and it works. The unit can be handed from one team to another, one day to another and it will just work.”