Promevo

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description on what your company does?

We are a digital marketing agency with offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and now Singapore. Some companies give us their online advertising budget and then we strategically place ads and do tracking and a lot of the analytical stuff so companies get the best marketing for their product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main goal or objective for working with Promevo?

We first worked with Promevo in January 2011 as part of our international expansion. We were initially using a .co.uk domain name with Google Apps. We needed to go through a slight rebranding and changing our name slightly, so we needed to move all of our Google Apps accounts from one domain to another. Within Google Apps, you just can’t rename the domain. At that time, there were very few companies doing any sort of migration. So I spoke to Promevo a couple of times. Our company spoke to Aaron at length on a number of occasions. We worked out a plan of exactly how we would go about moving 200 user accounts. I think it was 200 accounts and about 130 users from one domain to another. That was mostly done over a weekend. We then needed a large migration, there’s always glitches, but Aaron and his team were very good. And the next few days, Promevo followed up and resolved all of the glitches that we had, which unfortunately coincided with the Google glitch as well. So that compounded the problem. After that four days, we got all of hundreds and thousands of calendars synced and everything was resolved. And since then, we’ve used them when we’ve done acquisitions. We bought three companies in the last two years and migrated their user side from Google Apps or from Microsoft Exchange.

SOLUTION

Can you provide a general cost estimate?

I think that sort of information you can get from Promevo, for what their costs are per user and per account. I can’t remember what the figures were. And I probably wouldn’t share it even if I could remember. It’s all done on mailbox, who needs a calendar migrated, who needs documents migrated. Yeah, it’s very competitive. It was a logical choice to have somebody else who had the resources and the skills and the knowledge to do the migration as opposed to trying to doing it ourselves.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

It sounds like you’re fairly satisfied with the results?

Yes. One of the other reasons we use Promevo isn't only because of their domain migration skills, it's actually to move our domain under their reseller banner so that we could get use of the gPanel. As our domain and users grew, using the standard Google control panel was becoming very labor-intensive. The gPanel allows us to more easily make changes to user accounts or to make some processes. We’ve used it recently to standardize on email signatures. The gPanel is very good. I haven’t tried any other control panels that are now available in the market but at the time, this was one of the few that were available.

Is there anything you found to be unique or special about them compared to other developers or vendors in general that you’ve worked with?

They use the product. They live and breathe it. They were on Google Chat. I’ve had hangouts with them. If I ask them a question about something, they know exactly what I’m doing. I think they have a very good idea of people’s business process and how they’re using Google Apps. Their support has always been very good at any time of the day or night. I know they’re based in Kentucky and working in Central time. But they’re able to cover a wide range of time zones to provide us support whether it’s from London or from New York now. 

Is there anything that you would do differently or you think they could improve upon?

Yes. After the first migration, which was a very big project, it was having a sort of a how-to guide for not only how systems administrator deal with it but a step by step guide to explain to users what is happening. I make the guides now after we had to migrate somebody else into our domain. I’ve gone through the process a couple of times but it would have been great if Promevo would provide sort of a template. It would be a how-to guide or an information sheet so that administrators and users know exactly what is happening.  Sometimes, I’ll lose access to this. Then my email is going to be ported to this address. And then from this date, I’ll be using Google Apps and this is how things will move on. I sort of have my own guides for bringing new people on board for that. It would be good if from day one, we had a guide like that rather than having to update users at the last minute or when it was too late in the process.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of what your company does?

We’re the top to-go Q&A website where we are mostly crowd-sourced where the community builds in questions and answers.  Also, we are a company that manages all the databases, infrastructure, and everything behind it.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main goal or objective for undertaking the project?

We moved from Exchange. When we moved from Exchange, we reached out to Google asking, for some best resources and best answers on who we should go with as far as partnering. We wanted to have utilities to accomplish some of the same interfaces and goals and also moving all our data from Exchange into the Google Apps.  Google gave us a list of them.  And we interviewed and worked with, just on small projects, different ones and without a doubt, Shine’s the best partner that we could come up with. Their technical skills very much complement ours and we can get very nitty-gritty with them. We just felt that they would be the best fit and they have since turned into that.

SOLUTION

Can you tell me a little bit more about the scope of the project?

It’s a very large one. The scope was taking years of archival data and active data out of Exchange, moving it into Google Apps.  And since then, we’ve acquired multiple other smaller companies, moving all their data in and compiling it and putting it into our same Exchange.  Well, not Exchange anymore but our Google Apps engine with all of our components. They also then provide support with any issues we have along with metrics and reporting utilities which allows us to single-handedly manipulate and manage all of our users.  We have over 195 users, and thousands and thousands of documents are created weekly. The system allows us to administer and make sure that everything’s kept backed up, kept internally secure.  They just provide top notch support and tools.

Does that include any training or introduction to your employees to get used to Google Apps?

Yes, both. They offered management training for our IT team, which we administer the different utilities. And then they also offered remote training on how to properly get adjusted and used to the Google engine compare to the Exchange interface. 

How long ago was the transition completed?

It’s ongoing as we keep acquiring companies and acquiring more people on board as individuals.  The large bulk of the project was completed almost two years ago. But we have very fast growth, so we are actually working with them. I hung up working with another tool that they were using 20 minutes ago. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How happy are you with the results of their work so far?

Great, I am more than happy. I have referred them to multiple colleagues that I have done a little work with who are in the same industry as me and are ready to move into Google Apps. 

Is there anything that is special and unique about Promevo compared to other developers or vendors in general that you’ve worked with?

Yes, I would very much say so. A couple of the actual top engineers and top troubleshooting technicians have gone so far with the relationship that we have each other’s personal IMs and phone numbers. Even before issues start arising, they give me a heads up. When they start rolling out a new code and they might have an issue, they reach out to myself and vice versa. Once you start to get to work with them and they really know that you’re a technical person, they make the relationship on a different level. This is a very valuable relationship to have when you’re dealing with mission critical data, when it’s your company’s email, documents, all the calendars. So knowing that you actually have a first line with some of the top engineers and top troubleshooters inside this business makes you very comfortable with your systems.

Is there anything that you would do differently a second time around or think they could improve upon?

Yes, but that’s one of the nice things also with making a very good relationship with the engineers and the development teams. Promevo is very open to criticism on their work. It’s not only their work, it’s just things they might not think of and it’s things that they think will work great, but in reality don't. They’re always very open, always changing. I think since we’ve been with them, we’ve been through five or six different iterations of their tools. Each time, it just gets better because the more and more that you report bugs, you work with them productively. We say, “Hey, I’d rather have this than that or hey, can you guys add this or can we run this in a different manner.” They always take it and go, “Okay, sure.”  And they build the tool that matches your situation and make you better at your business.