Electric

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am BenchPrep's Office and Operations Manager. BenchPrep is a Saas company that has been around since 2013. We are growing and so is our client list. I have been working at BenchPrep for 4 years and 3 months and I am one of the first 15 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Electric?

To manage IT services, helpdesk, computer/device management, etc.

What were your goals for this project?

To take a large amount of the IT work off of my plate as well as tech's plate because as we grew, the constant requests were taking up quite a bit of our time in our already busy schedule.

SOLUTION

How did you select Electric?

Our tech leader took the time to review 2-3 companies that could help us with our IT needs, he moved two forward and we finally selected Electric.

Describe the project in detail.

Ongoing IT support requests, onboarding/offboarding assistance and ordering new products for the team

What was the team composition?

We have kept the same amount of people who were involved from the start of our partnership.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

It has been really great to have the ability to guide our employees to Electric as needed. Their support saves us several hours a week. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our weekly meeting with our customer support rep has been great, we've been able to tackle all of our initiatives in a decent timeframe and have been seeing great progress being made as we are fully getting Electric onboarding to our systems.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are constantly asking for feedback on how to better improve their business/cater to our company

Are there any areas for improvement?

We have been very happy with Electric's service thus far, our customer support person is great and very easy to work with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the operations coordinator at Kongregate Inc, a mobile game developer. In my role, I oversee day-to-day administrative needs across the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Electric?

We wanted to upgrade our IT services to cover all of our offices in San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, and Chicago. Previously, our IT management was only limited to San Francisco and Portland, so we sought to create parity throughout our locations.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Electric acts as our managed IT service provider. Their primary duty is to handle day-to-day questions through an online help desk and Slack. Another responsibility is to handle onboarding and offboarding — that’s in terms of taking care of the backend account management and hardware setup for new hires and former employees.

As for their larger projects, they’re now involved in migrating data between two Google domains.

What is the team composition? 

We have one direct account manager, but I’m not sure how many support technicians are monitoring the help desk. The technicians vary depending on the type of request.

How did you come to work with Electric?

Electric had initially reached out to our former CEO, but we were happy with our IT manager at the time. I didn’t think much about them until I went to an administrative event that they helped sponsor and learned a bit more about them. When we decided to move our headquarters from San Francisco, we decided that this would be a good opportunity to unite the offices. This would ensure that every office had the same level of IT support.

At the same time, we noticed that our previous IT provider’s support level started to drop. They only had one rep on site, so getting service was always a matter of scheduling time. It wasn’t a situation where we could get consistent help.

That was right around the time that we started looking at Electric again. We ultimately went with them after they convinced us that this would be a great switch for us. They said with confidence that they could provide similar, if not better, support than our previous provider at a reduced cost.

How much have you invested with them?

I’d say it’s about $45,000–$55,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2020. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

By taking on onboarding and offboarding, Electric has saved me about 35% of my time because my team doesn’t have to manually take care of all of the account activations/deactivations. Their consistent hardware troubleshooting has also probably reduced our downtime by about 20%.

In terms of their regular day service, they lose a few stars because the help desk is very inconsistent. There are certain reps who are fantastic, but it can take a while to get the IT help that we need. 

The help desk operates in tiers. The initial person you’d talk to basically funnels your service request to the next tier of support. That rep will have more technical knowledge and will either resolve your issue or escalate it to a higher tier until you reach the top. The final tier is where you’ll talk to the actual IT expert.

Logistically, this makes sense, but it can feel like you’re hitting barriers until you get to the right tier. Likewise, they keep their promise to always responds within 10 minutes, but it’s really 10 minutes to acknowledge that they’ve received your request rather than the time spent resolving the request.

How did Electric perform from a project management standpoint?

Electric is proactive about setting up meetings series with all involved parties at every stage of project development to ensure everyone is up to date and on the same page. They communicate well what requirements they expect will be needed on their end and what steps the other parties will need to take at all stages to reach project completion.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The fact that Electric can cover all of our offices nationwide and provide the same level of service (even if it’s a little rough at times), is impressive. I wouldn’t have any other company supporting us at this point because they’ve been able to take care of us throughout the pandemic.

On top of that, they’re open to both our suggestions and criticisms. They understand that they’re not a perfect service, but they’re always trying to do better. They want to deliver to our expectations and give what they believe they’ve promised us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their marketing department does a great job of selling their products. When it comes to the actual delivery, the service turned out to consist of more promises for service features that weren’t quite ready to rollout than we'd been led to believe. The marketing team would guarantee a service function that the implementing department would clarify didn't operate as expected. There’s clearly a lot of compartmentalization between Electric’s teams.

While their level of service is improving and they consistently welcome feedback to help them in this, it can be taxing at times to give the same relatively consistent feedback to multiple Electric teams. That said, they are good and getting better about implementing customer-requested changes. In the end, it’s just growing pains — I get that. They’re still in the process of molding exactly what their service is, and they’ve got some great ideas to bring to the industry.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Always ask questions so that you know exactly what you’re asking of them. You need to make sure that communication is clear and reiterate if necessary.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of TeamSnap, an organization and communication tool for sport club associations as well as independent teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Electric?

I was looking to outsource our IT function to keep our internal resources focused on our product rather than on keeping up our machines and software.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Electric manages all of our IT applications. They manage the onboarding and offboarding of our employees as well as all of our hardware purchases and repair. The team also reviews the security of our internal system and applies different patches to systems to ensure security best practices. Generally speaking, Electric is also our IT help desk for any problems that arise internally.

What is the team composition?

We work directly with three people, but indirectly, we have their entire team for our needs.

How did you come to work with Electric?

I was doing a review of multiple ways we could handle our IT support, from hiring folks full-time or part-time, or working with a traditional IT consulting firm. After a few months of research, Electric stood out as the clear leader to us. They were actually innovating and doing something different from the norm, and they could cover everything we needed. 

How much have you invested with them?

We have a two year contract at $73,000 per year, which will increase over time. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Electric’s service is very high-quality. It’s been an excellent experience.

How did Electric perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily correspond through Slack, or email for less time-critical projects. We use Atlassian to manage the project.

Electric has no problems with scheduling — they were actually able to get us onboarded as soon as we were ready. They’ve met all their deadlines on the mark, and even a little bit early in some cases.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My favorite part of working with Electric is their proactive nature. They’re always looking forward, rather than just waiting to be reactive to problems we bring to them. They bring suggestions to us, which is a breath of fresh air. We’re not there to direct their work — they act as a partner. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re still relatively new, so they haven’t fully connected all of their systems. The only criticism I have is that sometimes we have to connect two systems together, though it’s pretty minor.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take some time to think about the cost of hiring the number of people you would need to cover the five or six distinct things Electric does. Then, ask yourself why you wouldn’t do that for the cost that they’re offering. They can really streamline your flows so you can focus on your product.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Commercial real estate software company with 140 employees based out of NYC-- I'm the Office Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Electric?

As our team rapidly expanded, IT support could no longer live within one individual (and one without much IT experience). We needed hardware and software support as well onsite technician help.

What were your goals for this project?

Instead of hiring a dedicated IT person, the office manager could work in conjunction with Electric for IT support for basic team needs, onboarding/offboarding checklists, and for network oversight/assistance.

SOLUTION

How did you select Electric?

I know we were referred to Electric from a past employee but I was not part of the section process. I became a primary admin in the partnership as soon as we signed though.

Describe the project in detail.

Assist hiring managers and the office manager for a variety of IT support including basic team needs (hardware procurement, software licensing, troubleshooting, etc), executing onboarding/offboarding checklists, and for network monitoring.

What was the team composition?

We had an onboarding/implementation rep (Becky) and then following onboarding we were assigned our Client Success Manager (Justin).

Since Justin was new to the role/company we had a senior CSM for the first few months for additional oversight/assistance. We also have a dedicated "Projects" rep (Brittany) as well as Help Desk support (ticket routing through Slack)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We've come to rely heavily on Electric in our onboarding and offboarding processes.

They've streamlined new user set ups according to company preferences/configurations and helped us stay on top of swiftly removing access/licenses in offboarding which helps us from both a financial and security standpoint.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Between our great customer success manager, the dependable Help Desk (through Slack), the ever-expanding realm of Turbine (online admin portal), and the onsite, ad-hoc technician support -- my company's needs are met.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I truly how user-oriented Electric has remained throughout our entire relationship. Electric is constantly evolving and improving and that is thanks to their value of customer feedback throughout the partnership.

Between surveys, bi-annual meetings, etc Electric is constantly asking and actively listening to our feedback and suggestions!

Are there any areas for improvement?

We'd like more saas applications to be supported but understand why some cannot be due to data security.

Also the response time and style of communication can vary greatly when slacking the Help Desk but over the past 9 months Electric has worked to improve backend ticket routing and efficiency and I have noticed their improvements

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Director of Ops- Owner of the relationship

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Electric?

Our company outgrew our previous MSP. We needed a better IT Solution to help manage our day-to-day team needs and security on the back end.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The AE was very professional and helped us quickly get signed on and started with their implementation team since our previous IT company left us high and dry.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

We signed on for Electric to be our MSP.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had several people from Electric support us to get fully implemented in less time than we expected.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

They were able to get us 90% implemented in a week's time with testing and support available on the 5th day.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our teams worked extremely well together. Electric kept a good communication flow and found additional ways to keep us moving forward, no matter the challenge.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

How smoothly our implementation went! Our old IT company had several chaotic setups that didn't make sense, so the speed at which they were able to address and get us through was really impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Before signing, make sure to write out what can and cannot be done so there are no questions prior to starting the implementation outside of just the scope.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am an Operations Manager at a marketing company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Electric?

Remote IT support

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Remote IT specialists

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The Electric onboarding process was simple and easy. Their team was very supportive during this entire process.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Around 10.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We onboarding successfully.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Very easy to use with great costumer support.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder of Socialfly, a social media marketing and influencer agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Electric?

When we started working remotely we realized we needed an IT solution to streamline all of our needs.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched for providers and interviewed several companies and decided on Electric because of their software integration with Slack, communication and also the price.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

Electric made sure that we had standard onboarding and offboarding procedures for new hires and are also available to troubleshoot any issues within a few minutes for our team members. They are able to reach out to their team through Slack which makes it easier for us.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with the sales team and then an onboarding specialist and now when we have any issues we message their team through slack and someone responds within a few min to help us with whatever we may need.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We saved a significant amount of time and money by hiring Electric.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective. They integrate seamlessly and have their processes streamlined.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We love their organization and responsiveness.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They are great! Happy we went with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Director of Operations

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Electric?

IT Services

What were your goals for this project?

Getting better IT and security

SOLUTION

How did you select Electric?

based on past experienes

Describe the project in detail.

We just use electric for everything IT services related. They've been great.

What was the team composition?

at implementation, we had 15 employees

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

going great

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

very effective and responsive

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have great customer service!

Are there any areas for improvement?

none that I can think of