PKF Littlejohn, one of the UK’s fastest-expanding accountancy, audit, and advisory firms, has adopted the ControlUp ONE platform to enhance its IT infrastructure monitoring and manage its growing remote workforce.
ControlUp will enable the firm to gain real-time insights into its IT environment, helping to proactively address performance issues across its physical and virtual infrastructure.
With offices in London, Leeds, and Manchester, PKF Littlejohn specialises in auditing complex AIM and publicly traded companies. It is recognised as the largest auditor of AIM-listed firms in the UK and ranks fifth in the UK for total stock market clients, according to the Corporate Adviser Rankings guide. As part of its ambitious growth plans, the firm intends to double its headcount from 450 at the end of 2023 to over 900 by 2025, alongside expanding its office space by 66 per cent at its Canary Wharf headquarters.
To support this rapid expansion and its hybrid working model, PKF Littlejohn turned to ControlUp to provide comprehensive visibility into endpoint performance, facilitate proactive resolution of remote work issues, and optimise infrastructure across a mix of physical and virtual environments. IT Director Chris Madden explained that the platform was chosen because it offers immediate insights into user experience and infrastructure health without adding unnecessary overhead. He highlighted that ControlUp enables the team to anticipate and resolve issues before they impact colleagues, whether that’s troubleshooting slow computer performance at home or identifying under-resourced virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) sessions.
The platform has been deployed across the firm’s VDI environment and fleet of Windows laptops and desktops, supporting employees working remotely several days each week. ControlUp’s real-time diagnostics have proven valuable in several key areas. It has helped the IT team improve end-user experience by quickly pinpointing causes of performance issues such as slow Wi-Fi or network congestion, reducing the need for guesswork and lengthy troubleshooting. It also provides telemetry that assists in right-sizing VDI resources, enabling the team to assess whether current configurations meet demand or require adjustment. This insight informs decisions about whether to migrate more users to VDI or retain traditional desktops and laptops, alongside facilitating patch management and preventing configuration drift.
Furthermore, as the firm onboarded dozens of new employees each month, ControlUp’s early warning alerts about server stress have allowed the IT department to proactively scale infrastructure before performance problems arise. The platform also supports smarter, more sustainable hardware lifecycle decisions by identifying which devices should be upgraded or retired, contributing to cost-efficient and environmentally-conscious procurement strategies.
Madden noted that ControlUp’s retrospective insights have already delivered tangible benefits, such as diagnosing a connectivity issue caused by a user relying on a smartphone hotspot while abroad. Support staff swiftly identified the cause and resolved the problem, saving hours of manual investigation.
Following a successful in-house trial earlier this year, PKF Littlejohn completed the full deployment of ControlUp ONE in July 2025, with the software supplied by Highgate IT Solutions, a trusted reseller. The IT support team praised the platform’s ease of installation and user-friendly interface, reporting a smooth rollout without external assistance.
Madden concluded that the business case for ControlUp was compelling, citing its quick implementation, clear benefits, and alignment with the firm’s growth strategy. He emphasised that as PKF Littlejohn continues to expand, ControlUp will be instrumental in maintaining a proactive, efficient, and high-quality IT environment, ensuring the workforce remains productive and supported regardless of location or device.
ControlUp’s SVP of Marketing & Office of the CTO, Simon Townsend, added that in fast-growing organisations like PKF Littlejohn, the platform provides essential operational visibility to enable smart growth, agility, and sustained productivity across hybrid working arrangements.
