Free Edition Zip Co is a financial technology company based in Sydney, Australia that was founded in 2013. It simplifies how you pay everywhere and save every day by offering fast, fair, and seamless payment solutions online and in-store. Zip helps businesses grow by offering a best in class product and focusing on innovation to be the leader in next generation payments.
Currently, Zip Co's IT is managed by Jacob Turjman, Zip Co's Business IT Manager, and his 25-member external managed services provider (MSP) team in Sydney, Auckland, London, and New York. Zip Co supports its global workforce of more than 500 users with a mix of Windows and macOS systems.
With a diverse mix of desktops, laptops, and mobile devices, Zip Co had three major IT issues/challenges in its network.
Firstly, Zip Co did not have mobile device management (MDM) software and its device inventory was tracked only through a manual SharePoint list that was updated by the level 1 support technicians on an ad-hoc basis.
Secondly, Zip Co did not have a procurement strategy in place, and computers were purchased by a department other than IT. No provisioning solutions, such as Apple Business Manager (ABM) or Windows Autopilot were utilized at Zip Co, and quite a small few relationships with vendors were established.
Lastly, Zip Co was reliant on other companies to push software, policies, and patches to their machines. This was managed by a separate third-party tool that was not in Zip Co's control and this caused significant issues.
The Zip Co IT team decided to run a pilot project to evaluate and determine which product would best suit their patching, configuration, inventory, and MDM needs.
Discussing the journey Zip Co took to find ManageEngine Endpoint Central, Turjman provided insights on the evaluation process, and determined the organization needed to:
The search of a holistic endpoint management solution was resolved with ManageEngine Endpoint Central. Endpoint Central empowered Turjman's team to simultaneously enjoy the best of both worlds—Endpoint Central provided a full solution-set for both modern management and traditional client management, from the same console.
Previously, Zip Co did not have an automatic inventory of machines it could use to determine when it needed to order more equipment. It was all handled manually via a SharePoint spreadsheet. Having Endpoint Central in its network allows an agent to be installed on all the machines, and it automatically adds machines to the inventory so the Zip Co team can eliminate all the manual work and upkeep.
Zip Co did not have a patch management strategy and did not have a way to determine if patches were deployed promptly to all machines in the network. Endpoint Central enabled this, and Turjman is now confident that every machine is now patched and managed.
Zip Co did not utilize automation for business processes like laptop builds. Before Endpoint Central was implemented, it was still using an old golden image method for building machines. Endpoint Central has enabled the Zip Co IT department to create a build process that is now fully automated and can be implemented anywhere around the world. Also, the reports feature of Endpoint Central gives Zip Co an understanding of all the assets in the network, and reports are now automatically generated on a predetermined schedule.
Zip Co previously had no service desk to resolve IT issues. This problem was eliminated with the implementation of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. The integration of Endpoint Central with ServiceDesk Plus has enabled Zip Co to receive crucial alerts through both solutions.
With Endpoint Central in place, Turjman and his team could enjoy the ease of zero-touch device-provisioning options like Windows Autopilot and ABM, while simultaneously benefiting from granular device management capabilities, well beyond those achievable through MDM APIs.
Now, Zip Co can even drop-ship the devices directly to employees' homes. So, when a user turns on a brand-new Windows 10 machine and enters their AD credentials, their device gets joined to Endpoint Central UEM through Autopilot. In the background, the Autopilot enrolment also automatically invokes the legacy Endpoint Central agent that simultaneously empowers the IT team to achieve traditional desktop management capabilities, even when the device is enrolled through MDM functionalities.
Turjman notes that Endpoint Central has provided Zip Co with numerous benefits, such as:
Endpoint Central runs in the background of all workstations with minimal CPU and memory consumption, so users are not aware of it. The solution enabled Zip Co to develop policies that made the transition from office to home very smooth in every country. Zip Co was able to push out software to all machines quickly, so users transitioned to work from home environments without any issues.
Turjman was pleased to receive assistance from Dinesh Babu, technical account manager with ManageEngine, in the configuration and management of this product. Turjman and his IT team scheduled time with Babu, who travelled to Australia to assist them in getting the most out of the product.
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