Case Study: A Talk with SOS Children’s Village BC

Com Pro:

We’re on a call with Rachel Dalton, Director of Finance at SOS Children’s Village BC, to talk about how Com Pro works with and supports their organization by providing Managed IT services and support.

Hi Rachel, why don’t we begin with your background and a little bit about your career, your organization and how you came to be in your role there.

Rachel:

I’m a CPA and articled in public practise with one of the bigger Canadian accounting firms. I was looking to move away from public practise so moving from there to SOS Children’s Village BC was really just realizing that I wanted to do something that gave back to my community if you will.

I had great clients working in public practise and learned a lot. I worked with a lot of organizations who gave back themselves in that sense, whether they were non-profits or charities, or indigenous communities. So, the move over to SOS made sense. It was just a really good fit for me with the work that we do.

I’m the Director of Finance and I’m loving it. It’s been a really great journey, including the IT journey that I’ve endured pre-pandemic and during pandemic.

Com Pro:

What can you tell us about the organization in terms of a quick history, the size, and the type of work that the organization does?

Rachel:

We were established in 1986 I believe, and the founders realized there was a lack of importance put on children in the foster care system. There were gaps that needed to be filled to help support them. So that was how it got started.

We are associated with SOS Children’s Villages International. There are villages all over the world. Although we are affiliated with them, we are independent and run separately. Our model is in Canada, where there is only one delegated agency, the Ministry of children and family development.

We don’t have any authority over the children, so we work with caregivers to fill in any gaps they may need with the children in their care. That is arranged from multiple areas. We have a village of homes where our caregivers and the children live, and we have wrap around care right there in the village. So, we have someone on site during the day and then 24/7 support by phone or message, whatever the need might be; that can be mental wellness, that can be education. We also have a certified teacher who does tutoring for the children.

We just try to provide support based on the needs of our clients and community. We also work with youth aging out of the foster care system. In BC and Canada, there is a concern when kids leave the system, they don’t have any continued support. When I think of my own children, when they are 18 or 20, when they move out of the house, I don’t just stop talking to them. I keep answering the phone and sometimes I send them money. We help with that transition. And the Ministry has been working to recognize that; but, we’ve always done that and we keep it going to help.

We say once you’re an SOS BC child you always are. That’s your home and you are welcome home at any point for whatever you need. We have actual youth suites in each of the homes they move to. They spend a year or year and a half there depending on their needs until they are ready to transition out on their own, whether that’s post secondary or work — whatever they choose.

We also help other children in care in the community who may need additional support or youth aging out in the general community. We have the village and then we have the community. We have a staff of 17 and that includes our program staff, our head office staff, and our fundraising team. All of us on the ground making things work, bringing in money, and program stuff – trying to get them whatever they need to do their job.

SOS Children’s Village BC is a great organization and I’m happy to be a part of it.

The Problem/Challenge

Com Pro:

What specific problem from an organizational perspective were you trying to solve, before you decided to reach out to Com Pro? Or put another way, what was the challenge you were trying to address?

Rachel:

My first day with SOS happened to be the first day with a new IT system and there were problems from the beginning. To keep a long story short, it turns out that the third-party cloud-based server we were using was not reliable. There were so many hours of downtime it was unacceptable. We were asking “How can this be better for us? What can we do better because this isn’t working and it’s not a reasonable solution?”

Sometimes with charities, unfortunately what happens is that you are growing but you are still sort of a grass roots charity, so it’s kind of a question of what people can give us for really cheap and kind of piece it together. So, that’s kind of the system we had. Working with the third-party hosted cloud solution we just couldn’t make it work. It wasn’t working the way it needed to be.

We started working with Com Pro on an analysis of our needs and what would give us a better result. They provided us with an analysis and recommendation to go with Microsoft Office 365, a SharePoint server and all the great stuff that comes with it. They offered free licenses to a certain point for non profit organizations so that worked well for us.

Com Pro came up with the solution and rolled it out.

The Analysis/Solution

Com Pro:

So just to be clear, the solution included Microsoft Office 365 and you’re using all those great tools: Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, and the content you create is being saved to the Cloud on a SharePoint cloud server.

Rachel:

Yes. Exactly.

Com Pro:

Now that you’ve had a chance to work with Com Pro a while, how do you know that they are the right company to continue working with?

Rachel:

That’s a good question.

One reason we stay with them is that they continue to provide the service we need in the way that it was promised. The other reason is that I know what to expect. For example, if I reach out to our account manager, I know I can be honest with him about an issue that has occurred, that it needs to be resolved, and he’ll just take care of it.

There’s just this extra level of service that goes above and beyond. That’s probably the simplest way to put it.

Com Pro:

That’s such a great response Rachel. This is such a cliché thing to say but it’s ethics-based business. Something as simple as providing care-based service, even though it’s the technology industry, and being able to reach somebody, whether it’s by email or phone, and get a feeling that the other person actually cares to do the right thing to help you resolve your issue, is worth a lot.

It’s nice to hear that you are experiencing that!

For other organizations that need Managed IT Services, what have you learned that you might say to them; for example, “Hey, you might want to be mindful of this because it could happen!”

Rachel:

I think the first thing is to understand what the details of the service will look like. How much of that service do you get? Is it an unlimited service where you can spend hours of their time if you need it? Or is it reasonable for you to say that you’re only going to need them for 5 hours a month? So, assessing and estimating the time that you’ll need for Managed IT Services. If you don’t know that information, work with that Managed Services Provider to find out what is realistic. If there is a way to track that historically even for the last few months that’s really beneficial. I know with us, when I first came on board, we had six hours a month planned, but that got blown away fairly quickly with all of our downtime with the host server. That was one thing I learned really quickly!

The other thing is that you don’t know what you don’t know if you’re asking the right questions and trying to find the best solutions. So, I would encourage people not only to ask lots of questions from any sort of service provider they are talking to, but also to ask people they know in their network, “What are the questions I should be asking? What’s important when describing my needs?” If you’re not a tech person you may not be able to get that message across, so asking people in your network is helpful; but also finding a Managed Services Provider that understands and is willing to ask you questions to make sure they’ve got the whole picture.

I don’t know if there is a way to really do that but reaching out and straight up asking those questions. Just saying, “I know nothing about IT so I need you to walk me through this.” That’s really what I had to do.

I’m really good with just trouble shooting my computer; but, when it comes to who’s hosting, or what a server is, I had to learn all of that. For instance, the cloud isn’t really a cloud you know (laughs). It seems like it should be straight forward, but there are so many things (especially for smaller organizations) that if they don’t have anybody with experience in IT they’re not going to know. Finding an MSP that will be able to look at the big picture and think about how all the pieces will fit is important. I know that Com Pro did a good job of that when we were working through finding our best solution for what our needs are.

The Results

Com Pro:

Since retaining Com Pro for Managed IT Services and Print Solutions, and aside from dealing with support tickets what have been the positive results?

Rachel:

Our team is so happy with our migration to Microsoft Office365. The results have been improved efficiency and improved communication. Like I said, before Com Pro helped us, we were down for hours at a time on some days. That’s not feasible when you have clients who are needing your support. It’s different if it’s me sitting at my desk being frustrated with IT but it’s a whole other story if it is program staff trying to support one of our youth.

That frustration has pretty much been eliminated since our migration with Com Pro so that’s a big thing for sure.

I think the other thing, like I said before, was that we really had a lot of pieces being put together to build our IT system and it was previously done really piece meal. We had Gmail, we had a third party server hosting our documents and it was just a mish mash of stuff trying to be stuck together.  That’s not an issue anymore. Now, we are streamlined; everything fits and makes sense! It’s much more integrated and user friendly. So those two things for sure were the big pieces for us.

Com Pro:

Were there any cost savings or improvements to the bottom line for the organization as a result of working with Com Pro and having things working smoothly?

Rachel:

As far as cost savings from a Managed Service Provider, currently we haven’t been ready to reduce those because we want to be sure everyone is fully covered by support whenever they need to be.

But from a downtime perspective, if you look at the number of hours wasted prior to working with Com Pro, there have been thousands of dollars in cost savings for sure.

Com Pro:

Thank you for your time Rachel!