For 15 years, Surveypal has been helping market leaders make sense of their customer service data. During those years, they’ve helped their clients to gather millions of customer experience survey answers. Today, they’ve combined that experience with the latest AI technology and sprinkled on top of it their customers’ input on what they need from a customer data analytics solution. Growth and going international are on the horizon.
Surveypal is an IT company employing 30+ people. Typically, in a company of this size, one or more employees do the work of an IT support person in addition to their own work. The need for IT support often comes unexpectedly in everyday life, and interrupts productive work. Surveypal noticed that maintaining this operating model is too expensive, and identified risks related to information security.
”The skill requirement for the work of an IT support person is unreasonable. The maintenance of modern cloud-based office infrastructure and devices requires specialization. Data security was one of the biggest reasons to outsource IT, even if everything else was still sorted out ”, says Surveypal’s Pasi Lindholm.
There are differences in service providers
When Surveypal had decided on IT outsourcing, numerous service providers were found on the market. Companies were reviewed for a long time when it wasn’t certain what was wanted and what was even needed. In the end, only three companies were selected for the final stage.
”We were positively surprised that the price level was decent. If you think about the price on a monthly basis, it wasn’t a budget issue at all. We also noticed that there are a lot of difference in service providers. One thing stood out above the rest, the way Star IT has solved things as a modern SaaS-portal is something that others haven’t been able to do,” says Lindholm.
The positive deployment experience surprised
The first step of IT outsourcing was the IT asset inventory, which mapped the devices and licenses employees are using. ”With a company the size of Surveypal, you can be sure that when going through the licenses, you will find licenses that no one uses. Consequently, the price drops, and significant cost savings are achieved with a short survey,” says Lindholm.
When the devices and the licenses had been reviewed, the devices were moved to online management. This means that in the future, for example, software will be updated automatically. The last step was making email changes and configuration, which was a bit stressful. Any disruptions here could momentarily paralyze the company’s everyday life, but this phase also went smoothly.
”It’s nice to talk about the deployment this time, it’s not often a good experience in the IT field, but Star IT handled it professionally. We got a dedicated contact person that we met regularly, and he always proactively suggesting us the next steps. Star IT finished the project on schedule and within the agreed budget, and I only spent two days of my precious time,” tells Lindholm.
The importance of information security is growing
The employee must be able to trust that the devices and software used are secure. However, it often comes as a surprise that the basic settings of devices and programs are set so that even the service providers don’t recommend using the default settings. The list of various settings related to data security is long and related to e-mails or the data security of the device, for example.
”Our customers demand better information security even at the contract level. A service provider like Star IT, which is also good in information security, solves a large part of the information security package for us,” reminds Lindholm. The importance of information security is growing in changing digital environment.
The future is automated
In Surveypal, the HR system has also been renewed recently. The new HR system has been integrated into Star IT’s system, which eliminates many manual steps and increases data security.
In the future, when the company grows and becomes international, on-boarding and off-boarding run smoothly. When the ability and flexibility of the new IT outsourcing partner was noticed in Surveypal, the idea of automating access rights arose as well.
”The world has changed; applications are no longer installed on computers like ten years ago. The use of SaaS services has created an access right nightmare. Together with Star IT, we’re solving this so that access rights can be managed in the future through the Star IT’s SaaS-portal,” continues Lindholm. When a new employee starts, the access rights are automatically activated for the services that the employee needs.
From the employee’s point of view, the future looks very automated, which enables a fluent digital employee experience, and that’s what we call modern IT outsourcing!
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