A CUSTOMER CASE STUDY
Microsoft 365 Migration & Continued Support for Marketing Agency
PROJECT DETAILS
- Consulting & SI
- March 2020 - Ongoing
- $10,000 to $49,999
“Having someone like GenCare at just a phone call or email away, makes things so much easier and cleaner.”
PROJECT FEEDBACK
The client has been widely impressed with what the individual team members bring to the table. Their knowledge, expertise, and willingness to go above and beyond to enhance the client’s experience have been the catalysts for their continued success.
PROJECT SUMMARY
A marketing agency hired GenCare to assist and support them on their migration to Microsoft 365 from Google. The team is also responsible for guiding the company through the SharePoint platform.
The Client
I’m the IT Director of BrandVia, and we’re a company that makes promotional marketing materials — in layman’s terms, we make swag. We put labels on things, from a water bottle to a widget.
- Eric Rees | Director of IT, BrandVia
- Advertising & Marketing
- San Jose, California
The Challenge
We were moving from Google to Microsoft as our main business platform, and I wanted some help to make sure everything went smoothly, even though I felt comfortable enough to do the process myself.
The Approach
GenCare has basically been my primary Microsoft partner ever since. The initial contact with them was around helping us migrate from Google Business, to Microsoft 365 from a platform standpoint.
Right now, we’re moving a little further into the Microsoft 365 platform, meaning we’re going to start leaning more into their security like Azure Active Directory. The second thing they’re helping us with is migrating our phones to Microsoft Teams Business Voice.
Additionally, we’re also leaning on them to help us with SharePoint. I’m trying to create a learning environment for my team, myself included, so we can do as much heavy lifting as possible while GenCare looks over our shoulders.
Typically what happens is my team will sit down, plan out everything, and we’ll then go to GenCare, who will guide us throughout the process. What ultimately ends up happening is my team gets a strong knowledge base.
CLIENT RATING
What is the team composition?
My primary contact from their organization is Jeff (VP of Technical Services Sales). I also work with Charles (Director of Technical Services), who is my technical contact, and the one who helps us with the SharePoint project. The last person who I directly work with is Annant (Help Desk) who acts as my primary technical counsel.
How did you come to work with GenCare?
My introduction to GenCare came from another vendor, who wasn’t able to fulfill our needs.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve probably invested somewhere around $15,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
Our project with GenCare started in March 2020, and it’s been ongoing since.
The Outcome
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Jeff is very knowledgeable, and he has helped out in understanding the Microsoft licensing, which is quite a lot to digest. Charles is also great in helping us with SharePoint in the early days, which was tricky, because we were essentially taking a bunch of Google sites and converting and translating them into SharePoint sites — which requires a bit of retooling.
His knowledge and expertise played a big part in that. It wasn’t something that he had ever done before, but he knew how it could be done. He figured it out and helped us out a lot with that situation, because he had the tools and resources to do it — so that was great and I was very happy with the results.
As far as current projects go, Annant stays on top of everything. I was looking at some information on a Microsoft site, and he went ahead and told me that the information was outdated. He found me some resources that proved that point, and found out that Microsoft’s website is not always the most current, at least now.
How did GenCare perform from a project management standpoint?
We typically communicate through email because it’s way more conversational. Thankfully we haven’t really had any actual problems where we need real technical support — they’ve just been brilliant with managing the project.
We have weekly standing meetings, where typically at the end of it, my team would have a task list to work on. Then if we have any questions or anything pops up, we just simply email them and they’ll reply.
What did you find most impressive about them?
We’re very impressed with their knowledge and their willingness to help. There are two key things that I look for and those are I need to know if you know your stuff, and if you’re going to extend your hand and help. The way our company collaborates with vendors is we don’t want them to do all the work, we want them to teach us how to do the work.
I will always take the opportunity to learn and teach my team as well, but with General Network’s guidance because I don’t want to create problems for my company. Having someone like GenCare at just a phone call or email away, makes things so much easier and cleaner. They’ve been super helpful, super knowledgeable, and they’re everything I can hope for.
Are there any areas they could improve?
At this point, I don’t know. We haven’t worked long enough together and there haven’t been any real problems so far. They’re all great, they’re all responsive, so I can’t think of anything right now.
