How Teamwork’s integrated suite is the key to Security7’s productivity

Security7 Networks provides full-service IT managed services specializing in security and resilient connectivity to customers who wish to improve, manage, and secure their IT environments, while also decreasing costs. The company’s services include managed security platforms, performance and availability monitoring, compliance management, identity access management and security awareness training.

In this case study, we talked to Raymond Scholl, Partner and Chief Information Security Officer of Security7 Networks, to learn how integrated helpdesk and project management software from Teamwork has improved the company’s process for managing customer tickets and workflows.

Disconnected tools

Managing customer queries and requests for a company that provides IT services requires more than a basic ticketing software. For a time, Security7 Networks depended on a popular cloud-based service for managing customer tickets, but the program needed extensive modifications to provide a workable but still incomplete solution. "We were looking for helpdesk software that was very friendly, produced a dialog, and didn’t make customers feel challenged to gain our assistance. The original helpdesk software was slow, cumbersome, and expensive. We needed a streamlined, friendly ticketing solution that flowed like a normal dialog as we messaged back and forth. At the same time, Security7 Networks was also wrestling with its project management software, which was not integrated with the helpdesk software. Any tasks that arose from a ticket had to be manually entered and assigned in an entirely different platform. Sharing documents or additional information with other team members was also problematic, resulting in time being wasted switching between email and various applications.

Seamless integration

Close to a year ago, team leads at Security7 Networks decided they had reached the limit of the customization that was possible with their previous ticketing system. While searching for a more reliable and flexible option they discovered Teamwork Desk and decided to take the software for a test drive.

Within the first week of using Teamwork Desk, Security7 Networks discovered that the software integrated seamlessly with Teamwork, creating a streamlined workflow. This built-in integration between Teamwork Desk and Teamwork allows the team create tasks from tickets, ensuring that no customer request slips through the cracks. The ticket to task feature also saves time for the Security7 team as they no longer have to switch between apps to manually create tasks from tickets.

"Using Teamwork’s software suite simplifies our process considerably. We now have one platform where we can collaborate as a team, manage our workload, reference shared documents and communicate with customers. The followers feature in Teamwork Desk allows multiple employees receive notifications about status changes and responses on tickets that need support from multiple team members—helping everyone stay in the loop on important cases. Better oversight and reporting tools within Desk have also allowed a better distribution of work amongst employees — and a faster response time to an influx of support requests.

“We can now see how busy the team is with customer interactions and evaluate when we need to extend our staffing or schedule various resources.”

In addition to this, the software suite allows the Security7 team to keep all of their data in one place: tasks, team and customer conversations, progress reports and more. Rather than searching for important information scattered across multiple apps and email threads, the team can now locate exactly what they’re looking for in seconds with Teamwork’s powerful search feature.

Streamlined workflows

Teamwork gives Security7 the capacity to add an unlimited number of projects — helping the company to keep up with the demands of scaling their business and managing the needs of an increasing client base. Security7 is finding additional flexibility with Teamwork’s open API as it allows them create custom integrations that seamlessly assimilate the software suite into their workflow. This flexibility plus contact with a personal corporate account manager ensures that the functionality of the software suite is tailored to meet Security7’s unique business needs.

“We chose Teamwork for Enterprise for many reasons, and one of the most important is that it adapts to the way we work. The custom integration we created between our Network Monitoring System and Teamwork Desk is a perfect example of this. When node failures occur in the network or server monitoring software, new tickets are automatically generated, even before our team detects a problem.”

The biggest advantage of the software suite from Teamwork.com is that Security7 now have integrated apps that talk to each other rather than relying on fragmented solutions for project management, customer support and team messaging. End-to-end encryption and partner hosting with Amazon AWS give the team the confidence they need to focus on their business and customers without worrying about infrastructure issues.