Soho Apparel Ltd. on working with IT Partner

Dan, hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Sure. Several months ago I reached out to IT Partner looking for help migrating one of our companies from Google, from Gmail, over to Outlook on Microsoft. We had been constantly battling with Gmail and Google: issues like running out of space, constantly having to buy more space, having emails mysteriously disappear from people's inbox or their sent items. We also had issues with archiving, because no matter how much we archived, we never seemed to free up enough space, so we were constantly buying additional space. We started working with your team, and they brought up a couple of issues, Alex Krush most notably. One of the things he brought up was that we were emailing massive JPEG files back and forth internally, to several people on our design team and then over to our production team. Alex brought that to our attention and suggested that we look at using OneDrive and SharePoint. So the project morphed from what I call a simple migration, which is never simple, but Alex and his team made it seem very simple for us. Everything was moved over. Every email we tracked was definitely brought over, and we didn't lose any of our archives or any of our emails. That was amazing. And, knock on wood, since we converted over about six months ago, we have not had a single person have an issue with their email, losing emails or running out of space. We're actually saving money each month by switching over to Microsoft, and by not having to constantly go out to Google and buy additional space.

Alex bringing that to our attention created a new project. Then we started digging deeper and noticed that we had an awful lot of files, spreadsheets and documents that were being saved strictly on our internal server without any kind of cloud backup. Alex again brought that to our attention. And when I say ‘brought to our attention’, I don't want anyone to think it was a sales pitch. This was Alex prodding and gathering information to find out what our needs were. After the first leg of the project we went to a second leg, and then a third. He's actually transformed our company by putting us onto the cloud and making us more of a progressive company, which now has its pertinent, sensitive documents in the cloud. So if, God forbid, anything ever happens, we are protected. We've had situations where some of our sales team went in and started deleting pictures, JPEGs, because they simply did not understand what they were doing. Alex, of course, brought to our attention that once it's in the cloud, it's never really gone; we have a certain number of days, I think it's 30, to go back and retrieve it. He was able to retrieve it for us within minutes, and we were back up and running. So over the last several months he has brought up a lot of issues that we knew we had; we just did not know who to turn to. I've got to say, me reaching out to you guys several months ago was probably the greatest thing we could have done. We're definitely appreciative and looking forward to continuing to work with you. The projects are going to continue, and the fact is we do not have an IT department; we have one outside consultant. Alex, by setting up certain procedures for us, has let us do a lot of it on our own and be a little more independent.

The final piece of the puzzle, and I'm jumping all over the place, I apologize, but we had a lot of issues, was our email and the way we log on. We simply logged on, and, quite honestly, everyone had pretty easy and simple passwords. […] Alex was able to quickly advise us how to handle that. We changed everyone's password to a more complex password, and we've implemented MFA, which I call 2FA, two-factor authentication, or multi-factor authentication. So now we are definitely more secure than we've ever been. Everyone has a cell phone, pretty much; everyone does banking online, and when you bank online you get a code sent to your phone. It's the same process here. So something we were afraid of doing has been very easy to take on. We're an older company, and technology is difficult at times, especially without a full-time IT department. But it's been very easy, and Alex makes it easy for us: he gives us handouts before we implement something, so we can hand them out to our employees. We have about 60 employees here, about 35 in one company and 25 in the other. We're not small, we're not ridiculously large, but it's definitely enough to keep us busy. It's been a tremendous advantage and a great exercise, and hopefully a relationship that will last for years to come.

As far as suggestions for adding benefit, there would be none, quite honestly. Whenever we emailed, we immediately got a response. If it wasn't from Alex, it was from Kay, or Roman. There was always someone available to help us, which we're not used to. I'll be honest with you: when you're a small company and you don't have an IT department that talks the language of other IT professionals, it's very difficult. But this was by far the easiest exercise, or multiple exercises, that I ever went through. I've been doing this in apparel for a little over 30 years. I've done seven or eight system conversions. There's always an issue with it. These issues that we had and dealt with Alex on were amazingly easy for him to understand and to resolve for us. That was enlightening. Where I see our future partnership going: we are expanding every year; there are always going to be issues coming up, and there are always going to be technology advancements. Right now you handle our email, you set up new employees for us, you give them access, you bill us. I see us continuing with your firm for many, many years to come. And I'll be honest with you, I really don't even know at this point what else you guys do. It seems like everything I ask Alex to help us with, he's able to handle. In the short term, we would love to have iPads so our sales team can sit in the showroom without opening a laptop: jump onto an iPad, quickly enter an order, look at stock, look at pictures of the garments, write up an order with their buyer right there on the spot, and send it over to our order-entry team. That's where I envision Alex's team helping us in the short term. In the long term: keeping us secure and protected, making sure our cloud access is available with no issues, and setting up additional security. There are so many projects here, Dan, that we need help with, and you guys have been tremendous. I would recommend your team and your company to literally everyone who asks me, and even friends and peers who don't ask are going to hear from me, because this was probably the easiest experience I've ever gone through. I'm kind of at a loss for words, because I'm used to being angry all the time: ‘this is messed up, this didn't work right’. I just can't say that. So, props to you guys. Great job.

My pleasure. […]