GenCare

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing attorney at Hahn Law. We are a full service business law firm located in Southern California.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with General Networks?

We needed a new managed services provider due to our unhappiness with out previous vendor.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

General Networks constantly evaluate our technology and update it when needed. They are our resource if we have any issues or our network crashes, and they helped us migrate all of our documents to the cloud.

What is the team composition?

We usually work with a project manager, but we also speak directly to their tech people when we have a problem that needs to be resolved quickly.

How did you come to work with General Networks?

They contacted us and we decided to meet with them based on our initial conversations. At the time we were not happy with our vendor, so we decided to make the change.

What is the status of this engagement?

They have been our managed services provider since April 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We cannot afford to have our network down for a long period of time because time is money for our firm. General Networks has done a great job of being responsive, and they deal with any issues we have quickly and effectively. Our previous provider would take much too long to respond to us, and simply patch issues so that they would reappear later on. We no longer have those issues with General Networks.

How did General Networks perform from a project management standpoint?

They are great. They bill us on a per matter basis, and we communicate very often.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are quick to respond and are very good at what they do.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the administrator for CF Kent, a furniture manufacturing company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with General Networks?

We needed a better provider for our IT managed services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The day-to-day is our outlook. They set up new employees and remove terminated employees. If we want to purchase laptops, they set up everything and get them ready for us. They’ve set up several new laptops and desktops for us. They do network security and manage our servers. Additionally, they made the transaction from Office 2010 to Office 365 easy for us with no downtime at all. 

What is the team composition?

I mostly coordinate with Erik (Solutions Manager, General Networks). They have a good support team.

How did you come to work with General Networks?

I found them in a Google search. I read the reviews of 3–4 companies. General Networks presented very well on the website and provided great details in regard to the services that they cover. The wording on their website was simple and easy to understand. It was exactly what we were looking for.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay $25,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They respond quickly when we email or call them for solutions or problems. They always take care of things right away. There’s less downtime on our system compared to our old partner. Our employees are happy when speaking with them or emailing them for support issues.

How did General Networks perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re available. We call or email them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are quick to respond and solve problems quickly. They’ve been great. They care. Jeff (Account Manager, General Networks) took care of us from the beginning. They are very professional, knowledgeable, and friendly and easy to work with. We’re very happy that we found them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an IT director for a nonprofit research center.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with General Networks?

We were operating with a significantly outdated Microsoft Exchange email server and wanted to migrate all of our mailboxes to Office 365. We brought in General Networks to assist with that migration from start to finish.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re a large company and needed to transition 200 users to the new system. That’d be a nightmare to do manually, so we looked into using automated tools. General Networks helped us use automated tools to expedite the migration process and retain valuable information. They performed the backend work, while our team took on the responsibility of performing required tasks from the individual workstations. However, the migration got put on hold for a bit due to multiple reasons on our side. Ultimately, they moved our entire email system to Office 365 and handled some of the post-migration clean-up that becomes necessary after a project of this size.

What is the team composition?

We spoke to Jeff (Sales Director, General Networks) initially, but primarily worked with one system engineer and another team member who assisted him.

How did you come to work with General Networks?

They were referred to us by a business associate who had worked with them on a similar migration to Office 365. We decided to work with them because of several factors. Their pricing was reasonable in comparison to other vendors, but what made them stand out was their salesperson, Jeff. He’s very responsive and offers enough information to make decisions easy.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a roughly $20,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project took place from September 2017–March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The whole project was extremely successful. The integration wasn’t entirely seamless, but our user base is pleased with the results and new features. General Networks’ approach minimally affected our day-to-day operations. They did most of the work over weekends, so we were up and running by the time our staff came in on Monday. It was an easy process with minimal downtime that worked very well.

How did General Networks perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication is always key with me and they delivered across the board. As I mentioned, I particularly enjoyed working with Jeff. I’ve worked with a lot of individuals throughout my career and Jeff is probably my favorite sales rep. The engineer we worked with was also responsive to any questions or concerns.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their ability to summarize information and suggest actionable solutions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had a small issue related to some oddities on our backend that could’ve been prevented by greater attention to detail. However, we could’ve better communicated that information, so we share the responsibility for that misstep.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of business operations for Thoreau Services. We’re a nationwide janitorial company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with General Networks?

We needed a new firm to provide managed IT services. Our previous provider didn’t have the knowledge or resources required to adequately support us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged General Networks to utilize their understanding of personal computers, networks, and workspaces. They assist us daily by eradicating computer viruses, troubleshooting glitches, and setting up new workstations. They also migrated our files and email from a localized server to Office 365 and SharePoint.

What is the team composition?

An account manager serves as our administration contact. We also work directly with four different support team members on a ticket-by-ticket basis.

How did you come to work with General Networks?

They were hired by someone who’s no longer with the company. As a result, I’m not aware of how General Networks was found or the criteria they were matched against.

How much have you invested with them?

Their services cost roughly $60,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2015 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Integrating Office 365 has been positively affected our business by making daily operations more efficient. I have a lot more control of company-wide documents and everything is organized in one place. This accessibility facilitates easier workflows in every department.

How did General Networks perform from a project management standpoint?

The account manager communicates pricing and works through extensive solutions with me. If a task is outside of their wheelhouse, they’ll happily offer referrals. For the most, they’ll attempt any task you give them. Overall, I’m happy with the communication and availability that is provided through their ticket support system.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Some IT support companies can be defensive or unpleasant when you approach them with issues. Contrary to that, General Networks and their team are always respectful, patient, and helpful. They’re well-liked throughout my entire 40-person staff. I’ve been doing office administration work for 20 years and this is the best IT support company I’ve had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their itemized billing isn’t as detailed as I’d prefer. The monthly support bill is fine, but the issue occurs when we request extra work. They do a lot for us, so I’d like to know what exactly was performed and who put the hours towards it. Also, they frequently forget to use the purchase order numbers I give them on their invoices. It’s frustrating, but some companies are worst than others at filling out paperwork.

BACKGROUND

Please provide a brief description of your company?

I work for an agency under the California state government that regulates investor-owned utilities, gas, electric, communications, and water. We also have some safety responsibilities for various transportation companies and agencies within the state such as limousine companies, Bay Area Rapid Transit, and other railroads within cities.

What is your role?

I work for a quasi-judicial agency with judges that hear cases. These cases range from the very complicated, when PG&E is asking for a rate increase, or relatively simple, where an individual consumer will have a complaint against PG&E. I am an information systems analyst responsible for document management, Web publishing, and electronic filing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your organization’s business goals for this particular project?

We had a document management program also from OpenText, but it was getting old. It was going to be phased out, so we wanted to switch to a modern document system that would include all of our business processes. Processes include publishing our documents to the Web and publishing electronically filed documents to the Web. We had to migrate millions of documents from our old document management system to the new document management system, which is Content Server from OpenText. We were using eDocs before.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting OpenText? 

We felt that there was a better chance of operability between eDocs and Content Server since both are owned by Open Text. We looked at other document management systems including FileNet from IBM and Oracle. We thought OpenText had a longer track record with document management. IBM also has a long track record, but we felt it would be a very difficult task to try to import our existing eDocs into FileNet. So, we decided to purchase Content Server.

What was your process for selecting General Networks?

We had a long relationship with General Networks going back to the late 1990s, prior to the acquisition of eDocs by Open Text. They had been a partner for what was then called TC Docs. They helped us develop our web publishing system. They knew us very well. They knew our business processes very well, and also procurement was easy because they were on the California master work schedule. It was a combination of knowing them well, knowing that they were a good company, and knowing that they worked with us successfully in the past. Plus, procurement was easier than it would’ve been if we needed to solicit large-scale bids.

Can you tell me about the scope of the project?

General Networks was involved from start to finish. We had an internal library, which was very large. We also had smaller libraries, which contained our Web published and electronically filed documents. General Networks wrote specific codes for us to migrate the internal documents. They also wrote other specific code to migrate the Web-published and the electronically filed documents. The electronically filed documents are probably the most important because they are now the document of record. If a case gets appealed to the California Supreme Court, those documents have to be collected and sent to the court for review.

Besides OpenText, were any other technologies used?

There were codes written in DotNet. We had specific code written on top of Open Text by General Networks prior to the migration to Content Server. That was rewritten for Content Server.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

It was approximately $500,000, and it was for what the state called four full-time person years. Four full-time employees worked on it for about a year.

When was the project completed?

The project was completed in August of 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement?

Our goal was to expand the use of document management. eDocs and its predecessors were unpopular and not widely used outside of the team involved in web publishing and electronically filing. We had about 30 out of approximately 1,000 employees using it back then. After some time, we had 250 full-time heavy users, and we’ve now doubled that and hope to triple it. Content Server has been much more popular. It’s much closer to the look and feel of Microsoft Windows. People seem to be using it more than they did eDocs. Employee feedback has been overwhelmingly positive with only a few glitches reported occasionally.

Do you feel you made the right choice to use OpenText?

I think so. Our only issue right now is a licensing dispute. We were not really aware of this issue when we started the project, but the actual technology itself is working just fine.

How did General Networks perform during the project?

They performed wonderfully. They knew us coming in. We were able to sit down with them, and tell them what we wanted to do. Since they already knew us, General Networks had a good idea of how it could be done. They planned for a week and said, “Here’s the plan. What do you think?” They worked with us for the schedule, planning, and the migration. There was a lot of testing, and they were there the whole time, very responsive.

The project was successful?

Yes.

What’s unique or special about General Networks compared to other vendors you may have worked with?

It’s the responsiveness. When there have been minor glitches, they have a deep knowledge of my organization and Open Text. We send them an email or call them, and they’ll respond immediately, usually with a solution. The General Networks team is just very friendly. They rarely if ever make mistakes.

Is there any area that you think General Networks could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

The step that caused the most problems was migrating millions of documents. I think if we had to do it all over again, we would’ve started on that much earlier than we did to identify problems earlier. There was some scrambling in the middle of the project trying to figure out why certain documents weren’t getting migrated. There were some issues making sure all of the metadata was getting into the right places. We should’ve started earlier. These problems are more the fault of my organization than General Networks.

BACKGROUND

Please provide a brief description of what your company does

We’re a utility company based in California that reports to the state government.

What is your role?

I am a Project Manager

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals or reasons for undertaking the project with General Networks?

Basically, it started with negotiations with Open Text itself. We needed to find a reasonably-priced professional services firm for implementation of Open Text. Our Open Text sales representative suggested using General Networks. I did the initial research on three total companies and the other two companies didn’t perform well. General Networks was selected out of that group of three

SOLUTION

Why did you decide to use Open Text?

It is one of the biggest three companies and famous for acquiring smaller companies and one of the best offerings in the industry. My organization wanted to partner with a large company that had a diverse product set.

What parts of the project was General Networks involved in?

They were involved in installation, configuration, custom development, support, and the enhancement stages.

Besides OpenText, were any other technologies used for the project?

We are using a combination of Open Text and General Network’s products and custom-web development. Our system is based on Dotnet development and we have a custom website to retrieve and view the documents and metadata associated with it.

Can you give us a sense of the initiative in dollar terms?

About $500,000.

Is the project completed or still ongoing?

The main project is completed and we are currently running enhancements. The latest round of enhancements are related to CPUC findings and we need to implement some of the changes into review cycles for our documents.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any stats or metrics to track improvement from the project?

No, unfortunately we don’t have the resources to track improvement but it’s been successful.

Do you still feel you made the right decision to use OpenText?

Yes, it has worked well for our needs.

How did General Networks perform during the project?

Very well, we’re really happy with them.

When working with them, was there anything unique or special about them compared to some other companies that you’ve worked with?

General Networks tracks their work down to the minute, which is very unique. They track all activities by the minute so it’s very transparent.

General Networks has good reporting, good communication and their group is very professional.

Is there any area that you feel General Networks could improve upon or you would do differently?

Nothing that I can think of.

Would you recommend General Networks to others?

Yes, of course and I already have.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT manager of Vita-Pakt Citrus Products, a vertically integrated processor and supplier of industrial citrus ingredients. We produce juices, purees, and peels from California-grown fruit for food industry clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with GenCare?

We needed help cleaning up and rebuilding our network, providing end-user support, and managing our servers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

GenCare has migrated our infrastructure from on-premise to the cloud, audited our licensing, secured our network, and provided ongoing desktop and server support.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 2–5 teammates from GenCare.

How did you come to work with GenCare?

Someone referred GenCare to me. I chose them over other options because they had high ratings, were referred to me, and their company values aligned with ours.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with GenCare in September 2024, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

GenCare has saved us over $20,000 in Microsoft Office 365 licensing. Thanks to their work, we have a clean Active Directory and Office 365 environment and can now pass a Microsoft license audit. Moreover, our response time with GenCare is under one hour 99% of the time, whereas our previous MSP took days to respond.

How did GenCare perform from a project management standpoint?

GenCare’s project management is excellent. They always keep us up to date with how the project is going. Moreover, the weekly team calls are a tremendous help. We communicate via in-person meetings, virtual meetings, and email or messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

GenCare’s employees’ longevity is impressive. Generally, MSPs have a horrible churn with technical staff. Many of GenCare’s employees have been with the company for five or more years, which makes a big difference in the quality of support we receive compared to working with a new tech with no knowledge of our business every couple of months.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing GenCare could have done better or differently.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the IT administrator of a company that provides service for motors, pumps, and other electrical accessories. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with GenCare?

We needed software and IT infrastructure support for our locations. We had just lost our previous IT administrator and were looking for a partner to replace them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

On our first call with GenCare, we talked to Jeff (VP, Sales), who shared the services GenCare could provide for our company. GenCare offers remote and on-site managed IT services. At the beginning of our engagement, we worked under a block time approach and bought a certain number of hours for technical support. 

We've eventually changed our agreement because, as a company, we rely heavily on our software to run our businesses, and there are instances where we can't wait for specific issues to be addressed. GenCare supports critical issues and provides checkpoints to fix bugs quickly. GenCare provides help desk support through a ticketing system and manages our software licenses, including Microsoft 365. 

What is the team composition?

We've worked with four GenCare teammates, including Jeff and Oscar (Senior Systems Engineer). 

How did you come to work with GenCare?

We contacted GenCare through a referral from one of our company's business partners. GenCare showcased a broad ability to support our company's IT needs regarding software, hardware, and network.

How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent around $16,000 overall.

What is the status of this engagement?
We began working with GenCare in March 2021, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve seen a decrease in our system's downtime since partnering with GenCare. The team is succinct and knowledgeable, and we feel secure in their ability to provide the required services for our company. GenCare offers excellent service at critical times. When the teammate I work with doesn't know how to fix a particular problem, they refer me to a different team member who can assist me. There's always a GenCare teammate who can address my questions.

How did GenCare perform from a project management standpoint?
GenCare has a very prompt response time and always resolves our technical issues. We send an email, and GenCare generates a ticket based on our email. We also call the team or reach them via text if necessary. 

Are there any areas they could improve?
GenCare is a fairly new company, and initially, our communication was difficult. However, this situation was resolved after a couple of months. Besides that, I can't think of anything for GenCare to improve — our project runs smoothly. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I recommend clients have a clear idea about what they want from an IT services provider. Sometimes, clients have issues verbalizing their needs, and if they talk to GenCare about their needs as a company, GenCare will help them define what services their company requires at that moment and in the future. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CFO of a Clearance Company for the entertainment industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire GenCare?

Our IT management.

SOLUTION

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

We trust Jonathan Brown.

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

They have set up and maintain anything to do with computers for our business.

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

Their whole team. Approximately 7 people.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They always find a solution to any problems we are facing.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective.

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

Their knowledge.

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

No.