There are many Managed Services Providers that offer Managed IT Services, it’s difficult to know which one to select. Many people wonder what it’s like to work with Com Pro Business Solutions, and there’s no better way to understand it than through a customer’s eyes. So, join us as we sit down with Rachel Charles, Controller, from West Coast Windows, one of Com Pro’s clients. They discuss what it’s like to work with our team, why they chose Com Pro and why they compare their previous IT setup to a famous cartoon mouse…
COM PRO: Rachel, please describe your background at the company and the organization.
RACHEL: I’m the Controller and have been here for 4 years. West Coast Windows has been a Vancouver based business since 1976, which makes it 45 years to date. We manufacture vinyl windows and doors, and we also install them in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island. We are one of those smaller, niche market manufacturers. We cater more to higher end customers – and we do a lot of custom jobs. We are definitely not those people who are going to pump out windows at the cheapest price. We do a lot of really cool new builds and trendy stuff in North and West Vancouver, places like that. We’re fairly small, with 42 employees, so we manufacture everything here locally, as much as we can. But all of our products are from North America.
COM PRO: What was happening before you decided to go with Com Pro for your Managed IT Services?
RACHEL: So, the software we use for our coding and manufacturing was built in-house by a programmer that has worked for the company for years. It was him and one other guy who tried to piece-meal our IT as best they could. Things were tough, and we tried to save money by keeping things in-house. The only thing we outsourced was our email hosting. Everything else, we did ourselves – setting up computers, buying computers, doing all our networking, all that kind of stuff. Then, the gentleman who was assisting us left the company. His duties then fell to me. I’m fairly computer savvy, and my dad and brother work in the industry, so I felt like I could handle it in the beginning. Then, I realized that we really need to bring ourselves up to the 21st Century and standardize some things.
Some of our software didn’t seem to have licenses. We just tried to do what we could. I personally didn’t like the way we were going about things. I wanted someone to facilitate, so I wasn’t always being interrupted in the middle of my work with issues such as, “My computer stopped working”, “My monitor won’t work” or “My email is being weird”. So, we decided to explore other options.
COM PRO: Okay, great! So, what solutions did you consider? Assuming that you just didn’t say, “Oh Com Pro, let’s go with them”.
RACHEL: For sure. I had mentioned to my dad that we were looking for someone to help us out and upgrade some things. Since he’s in the IT industry, he said, “oh, you should contact these guys”. So, I reached out to Com Pro and started chatting. Our decision to go with them really had nothing to do with price or anything like that – it was just a good feeling. You know when you have that conversation with somebody, and you think, “I could work with this person”. I liked the way the company operated. They were smaller, like we were, and they understood our needs. They said, “I get that you’re not going to spend a quarter of a million dollars on upgrading all of your IT systems right away.” They understood that we were on a budget. So, instead, we selected only the important items and then we basically started working with them at the beginning of COVID.
COM PRO: So, in your opinion, what was the one thing that made Com Pro stand out against competitors?
RACHEL: The customer service representative. He made me feel super comfortable and not like he was selling me anything. I joked with him in the beginning that I talk to him more on the phone than I talk to my husband. We’d start talking about a project and then we’d get off topic. He’d tell me about his daughter and what they were doing on their house. They actually ended up getting their windows from us. It became a really good business relationship. Even now, we’ll reach out and say “Hi, I haven’t chatted with you in a while. How’s the family?”. Although it is a business relationship, our rep at Com Pro is a really nice person.
COM PRO: It’s funny you say that. It is really nice to be able to do business with good people.
RACHEL: Of course! I think that’s one thing that is really important, and we’ve always felt that way. In our business, relationships are everything and we aren’t just going to switch providers to save some money. We’re willing to pay a little more if we need to, to have that good relationship and that good feeling, and to work with people who are on the same page as us. When it came to Com Pro, that’s what sold it! It wasn’t price, because everyone was similar in their pricing, at least for the services we were looking for. We got this really good vibe from these people. So, we decided to give it a shot. It was really no pressure. There were a lot of options out there, to fit a variety of needs and budget, and we just decided to go all-in and say, “You guys do everything – we need your help!”
COM PRO: There is value in being able to develop trust; to have that comfortable, easy dialogue with someone. There’s no doubt. When you decided to go with Com Pro, how did we go about understanding your needs.
RACHEL: Yes. I remember a couple of guys coming in to take a look at our IT environment and assess what we had. They told us the honest truth, saying, “this is a little scary”.
COM PRO: Scary? In what way?
RACHEL: Just how we had things set up. For instance, we had a server that was password protected. But they broke into it even without a password.
COM PRO: So, from a security perspective, your server was vulnerable. What about your network in general? Was that vulnerable as well?
RACHEL: Yeah, I think so. For lack of a better word, it was sort of ‘Mickey Mouse’, like your coffee mug.
COM PRO: LOL! I love my Mickey Mouse coffee mug from Disneyland!
RACHEL: We tried our best to do what we thought was going to work for us, at a reasonable price. We had a really fancy Wi-Fi router from a local big box store, and things like that. But we didn’t realize that it set us up for some potential issues. We weren’t backing things up properly. Heaven forbid if something were to happen. We’d be in really big trouble. So, that’s basically what Com Pro did. They went around, investigating how things were set up, looking at the hardware we had. In the end, it involved some hard decisions. They told us, “even though you’ve bought some of these items recently, it’s really not suitable for your needs, and I think we need to replace all of them.”
COM PRO: So, it wasn’t as robust as it could be from a commercial perspective?
RACHEL: Yeah. It was probably more than adequate for most of the things we do, but when you’re in a business environment, ‘adequate’ isn’t the greatest.
COM PRO: Especially these days, with cyber security breaches being so prevalent.
RACHEL: Yeah, and we’ve had vendors who have gone through some of those issues. We had emails that were hacked at one point. It also made sense for us to standardize, rather than having 3 or 4 different models of computers. Now, everyone has the same computer. Hopefully, they’ll all last an equal time frame, and when they need to be replaced, we’ll replace them with similar types. It’s not, “Oh, this computer is set up this way because it’s a little bit different.” It’s all standard, which makes life easier.
COM PRO: So now, there are some standards in place. Good. Do you have any suggestions for other companies, in terms of challenges they might find along the way, things they should be mindful of? Not only from the perspective of what you’ve explained, as in meeting a challenge with a specific solution, but more along the lines of selecting a managed services provider to help out with IT. Were there any challenges that your peers should consider?
RACHEL: I think, for me, the biggest challenge was being able to really explain our situation and have the company understand our business needs and what we could afford. Also, allowing us to make a plan to do things slowly, over time. That was the nice thing about Com Pro. When we signed on they didn’t say, “Hey, let’s do this all at once — these are all the things that are a problem.”
COM PRO: It doesn’t have to be a full meal deal right from the ‘get-go’.
RACHEL: Yeah! They said, “Let’s identify the most important thing right now and then let’s move down the list. The nice-to-haves, we can deal with later.” That’s how it was explained to me by Com Pro. It made sense, because they really understood our business and what we needed. I think that’s probably the most important thing. Sometimes, it’s a struggle to explain to someone else that we don’t need some real fancy gaming computer with crazy video cards. I spend most of my day working in Excel. I don’t need anything super fancy. It’s little things like that, where people really understand what you need and can afford, and how to get you to where you should be. The Com Pro service reps were super honest with me in the beginning, saying, “The way you guys have things set up is probably the worst we’ve seen.”
Which is hard to hear. But also, it made me feel that they really cared. They said, “This is bad. This is why it’s bad. These are the things we need to do to get you to the point where it’s not scary.”
COM PRO: That’s great! It’s good to hear that you were able to work through your challenges and you feel comfortable with the vendor you are dealing with – the Managed IT services provider. Let’s talk about results now. Since you retained Com Pro, what have been the positive results?
RACHEL: I think we’re definitely more streamlined now. I’ve finally reached the point where people don’t call me anymore.
COM PRO: That’s a big one!
RACHEL: Yes. In many cases, when people come and say, “Rachel, something is wrong with my email…” Just as they are about to say it, instead, they respond, “I should call Com Pro, shouldn’t I?” And I answer, “Yep!”
That’s great. I think that’s the ideal. That’s now off my plate. Yes, I still help with little things, but this is really the success for me.
COM PRO: You mentioned you started with Com Pro at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. That was sometime in the spring of 2020. Have you gone through a full fiscal year since?
RACHEL: Probably now. Yes. It was interesting, because we planned this whole thing, and then COVID happened, and we were shut down. We had the hard conversation of, “This sucks right now – no money coming in – we’ve got to spend all this money to upgrade. But, is this the perfect opportunity to do it because there are less people in the office right now?”
COM PRO: And so, what did you decide?
RACHEL: We decided to go for it. The Com Pro rep helped us out. He found some financing companies that could get us through the implementation, because I was spending $70,000 to $80,000 for a whole new server, and all new desktops for everyone in the office. It was quite a project. It was almost perfect in the sense that there were only two of us in the office – a few Com Pro guys came in – they did everyone’s computers, set up the server, backed everything up and it was almost the perfect timing. It was a bit of a scary situation at that point because we didn’t know how long we’d be closed, so it could have blown up in our face. But it worked out and I’m glad we did it. Here we are, probably over a year later, and we’re still slowly picking away at things and upgrading, adding on more security, and little bits and pieces that we couldn’t in the beginning. To think of where we were in January… it seems like light years ago.
COM PRO: Was Com Pro involved in helping any of your employees working-from-home?
RACHEL: We really didn’t have many people working-from-home. We basically closed for 6 weeks. There were a few of us on the management team working remotely, answering the phone. We were all set up for that, which was great. We could remote access our office desktops on the odd day where we needed to work from home.
COM PRO: Did Com Pro assist with that?
RACHEL: Yes.
COM PRO: Okay. So, Com Pro was instrumental in that way, ensuring that the management team could work remotely?
RACHEL: For sure. I remember how frustrating it was when I couldn’t get my laptop to work from home and I spent an hour on the phone with Com Pro trying to figure out why my Wi-Fi wasn’t working. It turns out it was something to do with my internet provider, at least partially. Their system didn’t like my wireless card in my laptop, so we had to do a bunch of updates. We worked through some fun stuff at home.
COM PRO: That’s great to hear we were able to work through those issues with you, so you could continue working.
RACHEL: Yes.
COM PRO: Now that you’ve been through the fiscal year, the last question is, were there any cost savings, process changes, or efficiencies that improved your bottom line, from an IT perspective?
RACHEL: It definitely freed up my time to do other, higher value things. So, a better utilization of my time. And then 3 or 4 months ago, we decided to upgrade our multi-function printers as well. So, of course I called up Com Pro and said, “Hey, I know you guys do printers, so let’s talk.” He hooked me up with someone on the managed print side and they got us a great deal on something that was way better than what we had. They bought out our old contract. That’s been great as well. We have small savings – but $50/month is $50/month.
COM PRO: Would you say there is a certain peace of mind in knowing that your managed IT provider can also be a managed print services provider?
RACHEL: Yes, and it’s nice I’m comfortable with the organization and I know they won’t sell me something I don’t need, which is how I felt with our previous provider. They’d say, “We can upgrade your machine and this, and that, and the other.” Whereas, talking with Chris at Com Pro, he said, “Based on your printing needs, you don’t need something that big.” Rather than trying to sell us something to replace what we had, he got us into a smaller machine, which was way less money and still fit our needs. So, it speaks to the way Com Pro operates. They aren’t going to put you into a $300/month machine, when really a $200/month machine will be perfectly suitable.
COM PRO: That’s great to hear! Any final comments you want to make about your business relationship with Com Pro?
RACHEL: I have to say, you can definitely tell that everyone we’ve dealt with cares about their job. They’re always a pleasure to deal with on the phone, and always super polite and friendly. They probably get tired of hearing from me. I call a lot…“Hey guys, how’s it going?” But every single person I’ve dealt with has been amazing. I can’t say anything bad about anyone who has helped us.
That concludes our interview. We’d like to thank our guest, Rachel, for speaking with us today about her experience with Com Pro. We always like to hear that we’ve helped another local success story by delivering top notch Managed IT services in Vancouver. We wish your business the greatest success and it’s wonderful to hear that we’re meeting the mark, even exceeding it, when it comes to our Managed IT solutions and our customer experience.
Want to learn firsthand what it’s like to work with us? We’re always taking on new Managed IT Clients. If you want to learn more, call us at 604-574-8623, or fill out our online form.