403Tech Delivers Personal And Responsive IT Assistance When Cerebral Palsy Alberta Needs It
Cerebral Palsy Alberta is a registered non-profit organization that supports people affected by cerebral palsy and other disabilities in the province of Alberta, Canada. The agency was started in 1976 by parents that wanted to develop and provide more support for their children living with cerebral palsy. Thirteen years later they became an international affiliate of United Cerebral Palsy in the US, and today, they raise funds and collect donations to support Canadian families living with cerebral palsy.
Like any organization, Cerebral Palsy Alberta is immediately affected by problems with their IT. It’s such a crucial part of their operations that even a small problem or occasional lag can have considerable consequences. That’s why they need quick and effective support from their IT company.
Unfortunately, prior to working with 403Tech, Cerebral Palsy Alberta relied on a single IT support technician to take care of their IT. While this technician may have had expertise with IT, their “bedside manner” left something to be desired.
“We had this guy for years, and he was a very A-type personality type of guy, he wanted full control of everything,” says Joanne Dorn, Executive Director, Cerebral Palsy Albert. “He kind of did what we needed, but was very opinionated and locked us out of everything.”
The fact is that the quality of customer service offered by your IT team is just as important as their expertise with technology. It doesn’t matter how capable they are with IT if you and your staff are hesitating to call and ask for help.
“It got to the point where we’d all kind of had enough,” says Joanne. “If we called for something, we were questioned. If you’re running a business and the Internet goes down, you need to be able to call the person that knows about it so we can get it up. We don’t have time to go in and Google how to reset something if we’ve never been shown how to do it.”
Bottom line: your IT support should make your experience as a user easier — if they’re adding work to your plate, then they’re not doing their job. It was issues like this that pushed Cerebral Palsy Alberta to look for an alternative.
“The HR person at the time and I realized that maybe it’s time to make a change,” says Joanne. “We asked ourselves whether we were getting what we need, is the equipment correct — we don’t know.”
That’s what brought Cerebral Palsy Alberta to 403Tech. They wanted to have an IT team they could rely on to deliver personal and effective IT support when they needed it.
“403Tech are awesome,” says Joanne. “They are human, they are people, they are not control-freaks. They’re helping us navigate through some of the lockouts that the previous IT guy had implemented, and they’re working through that to try to unlock some things that had been previously locked.”
403Tech Moved Cerebral Palsy Alberta To The Cloud Just In Time
Over the past decade, the cloud has rapidly become one of the most integral technologies in modern society. Both for private consumers and business purposes, the cloud has offered a range of benefits, from convenient access to data to cost-savings in hardware reduction.
“Since we’ve gone with 403Tech, we’ve now moved over to the cloud,” says Joanne. “We still have a server left, but it’s my understanding that a lot of the computers we were told to get by the previous IT guy were refurbished, and I really don’t know what he was selling us.”
Unfortunately, harnessing the cloud means undergoing migration, which is a complicated process. An improperly managed migration can result in a range of negative consequences, including but not limited to:
- Permanent key data loss, with no backup or redundancies to replace it.
- The migration, already expensive, may take longer than expected adding additional downtime to the staff’s work life.
- Once it finally gets installed and launched, the platform is overly-complicated and difficult to learn, again, leading to more downtime for the staff.
An error-prone process like this requires expert planning and management – which is exactly what 403Tech delivered, and just in time. IT resources had never been as important as they became during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order for organizations to stay connected and productive while working remotely, they need the right technologies and processes in place.
Unfortunately, due to how quickly the pandemic developed, many businesses were unable to prepare for the shift to a remote work setting. Doing so would have required careful planning, methodical execution of new processes, and expert implementation of new technologies.
403Tech was key in transitioning Cerebral Palsy Alberta to go remote, providing the resources and support needed to get each and every staff member working productively from home. The 403Tech team was careful to make sure that Cerebral Palsy Alberta’s cloud environment was set up so that remote workers were properly secured, and not posing any risks to their business data.
“Going over to the cloud just before COVID was a lifesaver,” says Joanne. “Getting everyone updated computers and laptops, it happened at the right time, and that’s what we needed.”
In updating Cerebral Palsy Alberta’s systems, 403tech has made it easier for their employees with disabilities to work from home comfortably. The staff-wide user experience for Cerebral Palsy Alberta has never been better.
“With all these changes, they have been lifesavers for us,” says Joanne. “They’ve put up with so much from us. They’ve even come out to one of our poker fundraising events. They’re just a really good group of guys that are here to help, and they treat us like we’re their only client, even though I know they’ve got a million others.”
