This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: FastTrack Blog articles.
This post was written by Tom Van Oosterwyck, Customer Growth Manager at Spikes.
To stay competitive, today’s companies need to collaborate faster, ensure productivity, and keep their employees connected wherever they go. For companies with traditional onsite infrastructure, delivering these capabilities, especially in a way that ensures modern standards of data security, can be challenging—or just plain impossible. That’s why we’ve made it our mission at Spikes to help companies maximize their potential in the cloud.
Founded in 2002, Spikes has stood by our mission to encourage people to work better together with the right tools, processes, and culture. We believe in growth and in challenging the status quo. We also value listening to our customers and we strive to proactively deliver the best solutions for their environments, all with one goal: to deliver useful and workable solutions that create business value.
At Spikes, we believe in Microsoft 365, a solution that encompasses the productivity and collaboration tools of Office 365, the security of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security, and, at its core, the consistency of Windows 10. It’s an outstanding merger of price-to-performance and wide-ranging capabilities and contains all the tools we believe to be critical for the success of our customers, which is why we’ve based our business around designing and implementing Microsoft 365 workplaces.
Even if companies have yet to establish a culture of collaboration, Spikes can help them build new connections as they adopt Microsoft 365 and move to the cloud. A recent customer success story exemplifies the powerful modernizing effect brought on by the cloud, along with the right implementation tools. CEL Data Services (CELDS), a company that provides automatic teller machine (ATM) and IT support for ING Bank and other customers in banking, retail, and beyond, came to us looking to improve its communication channels with field workers while they were on call at different locations. The company was operating aging onsite servers, with no cloud presence to speak of, and was looking for a way to improve their method of sharing knowledge and create new ways to communicate with its field workers.
From concept to deployment
With our recommendation, CELDS not only chose to adopt Microsoft 365, but planned to modernize it further, including driving deep internal understanding of each aspect of Microsoft 365 and refreshing its mobile devices to maximize the impact of the cloud. The company had a lot of work to accomplish, and needed as little disruption as possible through the transition. Our team at Spikes met the challenge head on, working with leadership at CELDS to develop a roadmap that detailed the deployment of Microsoft 365 and helped the company envision all the possibilities that CELDS could take advantage of using Microsoft cloud services.
The roadmap broke down like this: first, Spikes would support CELDS with a significant revamp of its communication channels. Microsoft Teams would add real-time, persistent chat, file sharing, and video calls to its mobile options and Microsoft Exchange Online would replace the company’s existing email application, increasing file and storage sizes. Next, Microsoft SharePoint Online would become the new, connected hub for accessing and collaborating on documents, while the company’s new Microsoft Surface Go devices and smartphones would be managed through Microsoft Intune, increasing data security. Finally, Microsoft Azure Information Protection would be layered on top of Intune to further strengthen the company’s data security posture.
The FastTrack advantage
While the Spikes team was busy at work deploying these new Microsoft 365 solutions for CELDS, we also tapped the experts at Microsoft FastTrack to help drive adoption and understanding among the company’s employees. And the company’s Microsoft 365 subscription provided access to FastTrack best practices, tools, resources, and subject matter experts at no additional cost. Using these resources, the Spikes team encouraged engagement and trained champions within the CELDS community who are, to this day, driving enthusiasm for Microsoft 365 internally.
This two-pronged support from Spikes and FastTrack gave CELDS everything it needed—and more—to digitally transform. Bob Vanderstukken, Corporate Strategy Officer at CELDS, put it this way: “The approach Spikes and Microsoft FastTrack took in deploying Microsoft 365 assured that we got up and running quickly. They gave us more than just tools; they gave us a whole adoption process that helped us achieve what we had set out to.” In my mind, the company’s experience speaks volumes, and I highly recommend that my fellow IT professionals partner with the FastTrack team for Microsoft 365 transitions.
To learn more, read the CELDS case study or visit the FastTrack for Microsoft 365 website.
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