Client success story: Jennifer Brown Consulting

The challenge

Jennifer Brown Consulting is a workplace consulting firm specializing in the social media space. Though NYC is their home base, JBC’s staff is comprised of a global team of 15-20 mobile consultants, strategists, trainers, and support staff.

From an IT perspective, servicing the needs of a mobile workforce presents several challenges that Help with a Smile’s staff is well equipped to tackle. Spreading IT assets around the globe means a high dependence on excellent phone and remote desktop support for JBC’s employees, as well as the need for a stable and consistent set of IT practices to keep their business organized and efficient.

Our solution

One of the first things JBC asked of us as their IT advisors was to upgrade their aging fleet of laptops and implement a standard system configuration to help lower support costs and increase staff productivity. As a consulting firm, it was imperative to JBC that the configuration met the needs of virtual training, productive communication methods, and an ability to communicate via web and video on a secure platform.

JBC’s dedicated Help with a Smile account manager gathered all the necessary details on JBC’s needs and led the way through the quote process with several competing vendors. Our staff’s combined knowledge of the hardware, vendors, and JBC’s business practices meant that JBC was able to make the best purchase decision at the best price, freeing up some of their technology costs to help implement cutting edge social media practices that have garnered them awards and recognition in their field.

Help with a Smile worked with JBC’s management to arrive at a baseline configuration. Standardizing the hardware and pre-configuring the new laptops from our central office was critical to the success of the project. Help with a Smile's expert staff performed the entire project implementation at a fixed cost, allowing JBC’s management to know right from the start how much the project would cost them, from start to finish. Help with a Smile grabbed the reins at each step of the project, from un-boxing to system configuration, even shipping the laptops to JBC’s mobile workforce across the United States and in Europe. Afterwards our staff followed up individually with each employee. Help with a Smile’s goal throughout the process was to make the upgrade as seamless and painless as possible for JBC management and employees.

The results

Since the start of their relationship with Help with a Smile, JBC has drastically lowered their support overhead by implementing standard-issue laptops with a finely-tuned baseline configuration that fit the needs of their global workforce, while at the same time easing the financial and productivity burden of their day-to-day IT support needs.

In the past, JBC depended upon their management staff to field IT help requests and liaison with freelance IT consultants, a task which placed a heavy burden on their staff. Now, JBC utilizes Help with a Smile in every aspect of their internal IT practices, from our on demand help desk services to our proactive services to manage the critical pieces of their IT infrastructure. While Help with a Smile keeps JBC’s management team "in the know" on all things IT, they are no longer hung up in the day-to-day tasks of making sure that their employees’ IT needs are met.