Organization
Tek:Guides GmbH, an IT service provider specializing in small businesses, provides IT consultancy, IT infrastructure management and maintenance, as well as custom application development and support.
Headquarters
Brugg, Switzerland
Website
The Challenge
Tek:Guides provides its customers with maintenance of their IT infrastructure and cybersecurity. A key aspect of their service is ensuring the deployment of industry-specific custom software packages or localized versions of commonly used applications while keeping them up to date with the latest security patches. To meet this challenge, Tek:Guides needed the ability to automate the deployment of third-party software and updates, and do so invisibly to customers, ensuring that all IT maintenance issues were resolved without disrupting their activities.
Initially, Tek:Guides’ team relied on an on-premises solution from a Swiss vendor for this purpose, whose upgrade and support policy turned out to be unreliable. Every major product update brought numerous bugs, with no adequate support from the vendor, forcing the Tek:Guides team to spend hours on troubleshooting and manual software deployment. As a result, managing software and updates on customer endpoints was time-consuming, which put their business at risk of losing customer contracts and even facing bankruptcy. To address this challenge, Thomas Hirt, an owner and Managing Director at Tek:Guides, started looking for a more reliable solution for automated third-party patching and software deployment. He needed a product that would be quick to implement, easy to use, and provide his small team with extensive automation opportunities.
The Action1 Solution
Thomas evaluated several solutions, including N-Able, NinjaOne, and Atera, and ultimately chose Action1 because of its powerful capabilities in deploying and patching of third-party applications. He ruled out N-Able because it didn’t offer third-party software deployment features. Action1 Platform also outperformed NinjaOne and Atera, thanks to its intuitive interface and unlimited trial, which allowed Thomas to comfortably and extensively test the solution under real world conditions. “It only took me 20 minutes from creating the Action1 account to deploying the first software package to the client! I was astounded,” says Thomas.
The Benefits
Streamlined deployment and patching of third-party apps. Thomas appreciates Action1’s extensive automation capabilities in third-party software deployment and patching, especially for custom applications. It helps him meet a key customer need for delivering and managing localized versions of commonly used apps, such as Mozilla Firefox in German, as well as industry-specific apps, for which Thomas develops deployment packages exclusively for his customers. With Action1, Thomas can set up complex conditions and scripts for custom app deployment, significantly optimizing the deployment process and eliminating any potential disruptions on the customer side. As a result, Action1 enables Thomas and his team to provide an exceptional level of IT services, and do so behind the scenes. “If our customers don’t notice anything, if they can just work – that’s the highest praise we can get,” says Thomas.
Tek:Guides Custom Mozilla Firefox Package within Action1 Software Repository
Actions for Deploying Mozilla Firefox Package
Outstanding ROI. Action1 has become a mission-critical solution for Tek:Guides’ business, thanks to its powerful third-party app patching and deployment capabilities. With Action1, Thomas has managed to automate the processes that are essential to deliver value to his clients, while saving time, improving quality, and achieving an exceptional return on investment (ROI). In fact, the revenue from the services that Tek:Guides provides with Action1 is 40 times higher compared to the purchasing cost of the platform.
“Action1 helps us automate deployment and patching for third-party applications on customer endpoints, allowing us to deliver exceptional IT services and achieve a forty-to-one revenue vs. cost ratio.
Thomas Hirt, an owner and Managing Director at Tek:Guides.
Increased IT productivity. Thanks to Action1’s user-friendly interface and automation, Thomas and his team can do their job faster than with their previous solution, allowing him to save time and money. Additionally, as a cloud-native solution, Action1 helps Tek:Guides release workforce resources since their team doesn’t have to manage servers. As a result, Tek:Guides has optimized labor costs. Instead of having to both manage the deployment platform and create packages, the team can now concentrate on creating packages and, thus, providing value to customers. Thomas explains: “Before I started using Action1, I had to put in countless hours to keep our deployment platform running. But now, with Action1, my job is so much more enjoyable because it just works!”
