Speaker 1:
Welcome to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience.
Speaker 2:
Okay, it looks like we are live. Excited to be here today again. We’re going to be talking with the Vecino Group and specifically with Julia Algya. Did I say everything right? We have Julia’s around here and Julie. We’re going to be talking about the difference between good IT and bad IT and you guys have been a client for what has it been? A year and a half, two years, something like that.
Julia Algya:
We’ve been on a tech plan since January. I think we’ve been talking for a long time.
Speaker 2:
Okay, we’ve been talking … That’s right. Okay, so you guys have a lot of experience with IT and you guys are distributed throughout the nation. You have multiple offices. What is the difference you’ve seen between and this isn’t specifically around JMARK but specifically what have you seen between the difference of how IT was handled before and after and what kind of difference does it make within the organization when IT is being handled well and it’s going, versus not going well?
Julia Algya:
Sure. Like you say, we have multiple different offices as far as New York and then some as far as Nevada so we have a very broad reach basically of our employees and previously our IT experience just didn’t fit that mold. It was a smaller company that didn’t have the bandwidth to make their reach that far. We experienced just a lot of just lag in communication, not necessarily employees getting what they needed on a timely manner and just from a ability to meet needs, there was very limited. A lot of it resulted in my time or other people’s time in the company that wasn’t really their responsibility. When we chose to go with JMARK we just found that by picking someone that had a division for every specific thing as far as phones or fixing a printer issue or planning further with our company as far as our IT, it just met all the needs that we didn’t have previously.
Julia Algya:
We’ve experienced just better employee experience with IT. We had a lot of people that just had poor attitudes about it because they had been burned so a lot of that has been removed for us. Time from my part or other people’s part has been given back to us and I just think from a overall perspective we’re able to move forward as a company and not have these tiny little people feel on the outskirts. We’re now all together again so that’s been really beneficial from a standpoint of comradery and just being able to be a company that’s spread but also together.
Speaker 2:
How do you all use and consume technology being so far apart? What are the different pieces that you use to stay in collaboration and to just manage and run the company?
Julia Algya:
Yeah, so our company is built on a standpoint of just mobility. All of our employees have the option to work from where they want, when they want a lot of times. People work better at night then they work at night so our teams are diverse in that sense and so is our IT. We’ve got systems in place like Zoom or we’ve used Microsoft products as a whole but each division we’ve got construction, design which is architects and engineers, we’ve got our developers and so we’ve got multiple different, I guess, job descriptions and so from an IT perspective we are in multiple different applications. Our divisions are separate but together so we use Microsoft products to communicate a lot. Teams and various things like that that pull is in together but I would say division wise it’s very specific which makes our company hard to manage but also a challenge for some people. Hopefully … For JMARK it was a challenge.
Speaker 2:
When everything went down with the COVID-19 and the pandemic, it sounds like maybe it wasn’t a very hard transition to move to a remote working environment?
Julia Algya:
No, not really for us. I think some people struggled just from a workflow standpoint. They’re used to working not at home with kids but from a standpoint of having to make that change very quickly we were already prepared for it just because we already have remote users and so they didn’t have to change anything. It was really just our Springfield office that had to go home instead of coming to the office. It was very smooth on our part and communication never was dropped and we already have those things in place so it was a pretty good experience I think for everybody.
Speaker 4:
Was that from working with JMARK or do you think it would’ve been a different experience pre JMARK?
Julia Algya:
I think it would’ve been a different experience. Not trying to get technical, but we had just sent up a VPN for our designers so if we hadn’t had had that in place and JMARK helped us with that, a lot of our designers wouldn’t have been able to access their design files because that server is in our office so there were certain things that we had worked on prior to COVID just as a managerial standpoint of IT that weren’t in place prior and that would’ve greatly affected our ability to have our designers at home and not able to access their design files. I think just from a company standpoint we were prepared for mobility and being able to work from anywhere but not from an IT standpoint before JMARK.
Speaker 2:
Julia, if I remember correctly and I hope I have this right, there were some challenges during the onboarding and could you talk a little bit about that and just what were the challenges, how were they overcome?
Julia Algya:
Sure. I’m trying to think back. I almost tried to put those out of my mind but I think we had previously not been … Our structure I guess, IT structure had been very individual. We had kind of just assigned computers and had them have their login and nothing was globally managed so a lot of what we had to do when we onboarded with JMARK was put everybody on a domain and have them all be connected and not only that but JMARK has the ability to remote into computers and that was something that we didn’t have previously and so some people had to change in their mindset being watched, or not being watched but … That sounds, that’s not the word I’m looking for but more so being monitored and taken care of really was what it was.
Julia Algya:
We had employees that just weren’t used to, I think, the normal IT stuff that is in place for a lot of IT companies and recommended by a lot of IT companies. Onboarding was just a slower process to get everybody on the same page, teach people how to use tickets, teach people how to use the system that was going to help us and just a mindset and shift that we had previously just not had support on.
Speaker 2:
Looking back to how you’re operating now versus how you were operating before, there’s obviously been some fundamental changes in how you login, how you access information, how you communicate. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges you had with the old way of doing things and what has made that progress to change?
Dex:
I want to add an end to his question because I think not just the challenges in how it’s changed but also how that’s helped your workflows in having that access that he’s asking about?
Julia Algya:
Yeah. I think the biggest thing I can say is the ticket system. We did not have that previously and just from I have an issue and I don’t know how to fix it, they would come to me and it could be someone in New York and I don’t have the ability to remote into their computer. I don’t have the ability to do anything really to help them and see actually what’s going on and you can explain something all you want but until you see the computer sometimes you have no idea how to fix it. We were having just a lot of maintenance issues that were some of the things that we just couldn’t get fixed. It was taking forever to get fixed. From having the ticket system, that person has that immediate reaction, interaction with a support tech. They don’t have to go through someone else. That person, that support tech helps them individually, explains to them what’s going on and teaches them and we didn’t have that.
Julia Algya:
I think that the biggest thing from an employee standpoint was knowing that there’s someone on the other line. That it’s not someone that’s like me that’s capable of doing many things but not an IT person and that they were being explained to why this happens and this is how you prevent it or this is how do it differently in the future. A lot of our employees just weren’t getting answers so that was a big, I guess, change and benefit. I’m trying to think of what else specifically. I don’t know if that … Go ahead.
Speaker 2:
From what you told me about the onboarding, one thing that pops out at me or maybe not the onboarding but the before and after, one thing that pops out at me is the security. When you have a whole bunch of computers that aren’t on a domain, that are all separately with their own passwords, not being patch managed, not being updated, there are just lots and lots and lots of scary, scary risks. Was that ever part of the discussion before?
Julia Algya:
Yes. Previously we had been hacked. We had been hacked by someone in an African country. I’m not sure where it was and we had been shut down by multiple bank partners that we have and we’re a development company so we work with lots of money, lots of different lenders and because of that being hacked, email was hacked, we got shut down for weeks and we had to go through this entire process to make sure that we eradicated the issue and been in a better place and I think that our previous IT company did what they could to fix that issue but even when we came to JMARK we still had leftover stuff that was still causing issues and that had been a year and a half after the actual incident and so that was a huge thing when we chose JMARK because you guys have things in place to protect us from that happening and you can’t protect it every time but we knew that because of the business that we’re doing across the United States we needed to be in a better position to prevent that. That was a major experience that we had that we never wanted to experience ever again. So far it hasn’t happened again. We have the normal SPAM stuff but everybody has that so I think we’ve definitely taken care of the threat of that.
Speaker 2:
I don’t think I knew that. That’s pretty crazy. Can you quantify … A lot of companies don’t recover from something like that. Can you quantify, what did it cost the company? Maybe not in dollars but what kind of damage did it cause to the flow of everything?
Julia Algya:
It was more so time and reputation that it caused. We didn’t have to spend any money to get us out of the issue other than going to these domain websites and freeing our domain. I’m not sure if we had to pay anything for that. I’m sure there was some expense but I think with our lenders it was a reputation. That’s a huge thing for banks where you have to tell them we’ve been hacked and our bank information was accessed and they shut you down and you have to go through this process of basically proving yourself again. Now we have these things in place, we’ve done this, we’ve done that and it took months for us to get to the point where those banks would open up our accounts. We couldn’t access accounts because of the issue so I think just from a time perspective it took a lot of internal time because we didn’t have an IT company that necessarily was able to do the work for us. Yeah, it was a big deal.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I bet. Maybe I shouldn’t ask this question but how did your other IT company respond when you were hacked?
Julia Algya:
So if I remember correctly they had just started. This happened, I think, about a month or two months after they had started so to the extent, I honestly can’t remember. I know that they helped us free our domains and various things like that. They set up Barracuda because it happened through email hacking but I think that they took some precautions. I’m not sure that they went as far as they needed to. Like I said, we still had leftover issues that JMARK was able to eradicate for us.
Speaker 4:
I have a question. You touched on it a little bit earlier but can you talk more about the difference in the overall morale of the company when there’s bad frustrating IT versus good IT?
Julia Algya:
Yeah. I think because our system previously was, tell me your issue, I’ll go to them with your issue and they’ll come back to me, then I’ll go to you, the time it took for them to get answers was insurmountable. Sometimes the issue didn’t need an immediate response but sometimes it was, I can’t access these files and I need to submit this by the end of the day and there were times where we really butted up to that submittal period because we couldn’t get necessarily the attention that we needed. There was just repeated issues I think for a lot of people that I don’t know necessarily needed to be repeated. If it were fixed correctly we probably wouldn’t have suffered from the continual, this is happening again, I’m still having this issue or this has been weeks now I can’t do this.
Julia Algya:
I think we also had done a major file shift with our other company. We had moved from using Dropbox to using Microsoft products for our file storage and it did not go well and so a lot of our employees suffered from not being able to find files and it’s just [inaudible 00:16:33] issue at that point but many of them were just burned and so I think with just different things in place that JMARK has the ability to explain what’s going on, probably having a response to your inquiry even from a ticket, being able to be told you’re going to get a call in four hours, you’re going to get a call in 24 hours, if we didn’t do a good job let us know. There was no feedback for employees so I would say now they feel like they know who to talk to, they have a name and they get a response and those were two things that they just never had so I think in the world of interacting and having relationships, those two things are so important. Even if you’re working with someone virtually you need to know who you’re talking to because that’s just the world we live in.
Speaker 2:
You touched on something there a minute ago that a lot of people don’t talk about and I don’t even think we’ve ever talked about it is with security you can always have a cyber security insurance policy. You can have protections in place and I think a lot of business owners look at that and go okay I got this protection in place or I got this IT figured out and I’m doing what I can. But the harder thing to fix is culture. When you have people that want to do their job and they want to help the company but they’re just being held back because the technology, that’s a horrible situation and we’ve seen it with other companies and prospects where I’ve seen in the banking field where a loan officer will move from one bank to the other because the technology was so bad. That’s just something that I don’t think that people will talk about enough because culture is so vital to an organization and having it be ruined by security is unfortunate.
Julia Algya:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
One of the questions that we had come up on Facebook is, were you guys comfortable letting go of the IT when JMARK came onboard? How did that happen? Was there concern or fear about the transition or the control or anything like that?
Julia Algya:
It wasn’t really a question of whether we needed to switch. I think that it’s always a big decision when you move to a company that is able to provide more. I will say JMARK was a higher expense for us so it’s hard to spend money on something you don’t see come back to you necessarily. Of course you see better workflow and better employee morale when it comes to IT but you don’t necessarily get a profitable return and so just moving from a bigger expense to us was a big issue, not issue but we had to justify it and so far it’s worked out great for us but that was a big conversation. Just is it worth the expense, is it worth the time, is it worth all the … Because we had multiple other things that we needed to do as well to have a better structure. I would say that it was an easy decision to make but we were putting all our eggs in one basket. So far it’s worked out great. I think that everybody’s very happy with it but I don’t know if that answers that question. I went off on a tangent.
Speaker 2:
No exactly. No, that was good. You touched also there on something I hadn’t thought about. At JMARK we don’t market ourselves as the cheapest kid on the block and it has nothing to do with just trying to undercut anybody, it has to do with value. Can you speak a little bit to the cost versus value discussion or perception of value versus cost?
Julia Algya:
Sure. I think that when you’re not a techy, IT person, when you just have a need and you don’t know how to fix it you don’t value, I guess, the time it takes to fix a problem or to provide a solution and I think that just on a standpoint of … We started as a very small company, a couple people grew to eight people and then it grew, now we’re into the 70s and I think just changing the shift of we need more because we’ve surpassed our ability to fix issues. I think when we were contemplating moving to a different IT company the value that JMARK was able to provide just on an individual basis, they were able to meet individual needs, take a lot of time off of myself and other people that were filling this IT liaison role. That value, now I’m able to do things that I am supposed to be doing, that I was hired to be doing instead of filling these tiny little gaps that an expert could fill. I think that getting past that is still probably in our heads as far as you always have to weigh that. Is the expense valuable to me but I think the time aspect of that greatly outweighed just the money that was being spent.
Speaker 2:
Great. How have you seen, even throughout the situation that we’re in right now with COVID-19 and the pandemic and people spread apart, how have you seen everybody handle the stress and anxiety of being apart and how has technology played a part in reducing that stress if it has?
Julia Algya:
Yeah, I think one thing we did well before COVID and after COVID was just internally we have a publication that we do internally that we try to touch on different areas of our company, different projects that we’re doing, people that are having babies, people that are getting married or whatever. We were already doing that previously and our creative team did a wonderful job for us just keeping everybody engaged so they continue to do those things. We would do through Zoom or Teams we would … Our office is also an open air office and so we sit in pods with four, five, six people so there was one time where our pod got together over TEAMS and just said, “Hey, what’s up? It’s nice to see your face.” So that ability to make something that felt very distant near, I think allowed us to stay in contact. I know we’re always in contact, emails or whatever but some other things that we did as a company to involve people was just different activities over Zoom. It may have been 70 people wide but at least you dialed back in and realized you’re part of a bigger team than just someone sitting at their kitchen table and their dog sitting next to them. I think we were just able to make the situation feel less lonely.
Speaker 2:
What are some of the tactics that you’ve done? You mentioned Zoom. Are you guys just holding a weekly Zoom call with everybody or are you doing, I don’t know, is there a schedule or something or how are you doing that?
Julia Algya:
Yeah. I won’t take credit for this at all but our creative team did a wonderful job and we had multiple different events but one of them was a scavenger hunt so people opted in to be a part of it and we were split into teams and the creative team came up with multiple different lists of stuff that … One of them was someone’s teeth so these teams of groups were split up and we would have a certain amount of time to run around our house and gather together all these things and someone one and we got a prize at the end but it was just a fun way to be interactive and not feel so lonely but there was just random stuff on there. You can imagine what things people have hidden in their house. It was just a way to interact and be a part of people’s lives and yeah, so that was a super fun thing that they did.
Speaker 2:
So … Oh go ahead Dex.
Dex:
No, I was just going to ask going back a little bit when you were talking about just being able to be in touch with people during the COVID-19 situation and collaborate and I think in your case with so many offices throughout the nation and people that are working in the field some days it sounds like, communication is extremely important and I wanted to get your take on how technology is helping that in a greater sense or you see it helping once we’re back to the whatever the normal is after we’re not all working at home and how communication helps that and how technology helps that communication and how that helps … A phrase we use is increase the velocity of your business and getting more done?
Julia Algya:
Yeah. I think I heard multiple people say that there was less meetings because we learned to just not waste people’s time. Not only because they had other distractions like kids or family at home or some were teaching their kids homeschool during a certain period of time, others didn’t have great wifi so just the productivity of most people I think greatly … I found myself busier. Not because I was filling my time with more things but I just feel like my productivity greatly increased because I was able to plan my day out, wasn’t distracted by other people and through Zoom or Teams, those were the platforms we used to do video calls or voice calls, you were just more respectful of people’s time and I think we found that decisions were made faster, meetings were less long. I think productivity greatly increased which it sounds weird. We’re not all in the same room, we can’t collaborate that way but I just think that you get to a point sometimes where it’s convenience to have someone in the office that you can just go run something by and time’s wasted sometimes just because you could get a quick answer by an email.
Julia Algya:
We use Teams chat a lot. It’s simple things that may have required a meeting or walking down the hallway and talking to someone was just a simple question and it got answered and then we moved on with life. I think again, having an IT company that was able to fix problems quickly. You guys were all remote too so your time was I think planned better probably too so answering questions that way too was just, I think we all experienced a better workflow.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I love that and agree with it completely except for the less meeting part. That’s not happening. Over the course of the last couple months we’ve been talking a lot about what the world is calling the new normal and what we’ve coined as potentially the better normal. There was a statistic that I read recently that 80 percent of the people who have started working from home since COVID hit would like to remain working from home and that goes into that idea of am I more productive, am I better equipped? Can you speak a little bit to how the Vecino Group is adapting to the situation and what does that mean for the future and how you think you will be working together?
Julia Algya:
Yeah. I think that we’ve found but again we were kind of already set up this way, but we just found that collaboration does not need to happen always in person. A lot of what I do is working with someone that lives in Oklahoma so as far as me needing to be in the office, I found that maybe it’s not as necessary. Yes, I live in Springfield and our office is in Springfield but everyday I could probably plan my day better. I think that most people have found that just from a sense of productivity and collaboration we can survive and we can probably benefit from people being more diverse. I do think that some people found that they can’t work at home, that an office setting is their best place to work and so at the end of May we started to transition.
Julia Algya:
If you feel better, if you’re job requires you to be in the office, we started to transition in a very slow way with social distancing and masks and everything but there are people that have chosen to go back to the office just from a productivity and being around people. Some people couldn’t handle not being around anybody. I think that just moving forward as a company we’re being more respectful of people’s preference and everybody’s just learning what works best. I think what the world is finding out, there’s not one way to do things. It doesn’t have to be that way and sometimes we can be more adaptable.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. I think that goes back into what we were talking about before with culture, with managers needing to adapt and understand how people are feeling, how people are most productive and not accepting the status quo. I know exactly what you’re talking about. We had Jeremy Hill on the podcast a couple months ago and he was saying when he was at the office it was just normal to walk up and go somebody’s desk and interrupt them and for the first few weeks of working from home he didn’t like it and now he’s like, oh I’m so much more productive because I’m not getting up and interrupting people.
Julia Algya:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Has the business changed at all with what’s going on right now? I know you guys are in housing and urban development. Has anything changed with what’s going on right now and how are you adapting and innovating out of the potential changes?
Julia Algya:
Yeah, we’ve got projects in operations which means that we’ve got … We’ve got residents living in our housing. Some are low income, some are student and so one of the facets that affected us with COVID was we had to take a lot of precautions to keep our residents safe, to make sure that they were complying with social distancing and masks and whatever else was regulated. We have a lot of properties in New York so some of those had to take drastic measures just with what was going on there to protect our residents. Anytime we had a resident diagnosed with COVID we had to take certain precautions so there were a lot of discussion about what was best to do, complying with CDC, that type of thing.
Julia Algya:
We also have properties in construction and there was a threat that possibly construction sites would be shut down just because they weren’t vital to the success of the country so thankfully none of our construction sites got to shut down. Production got delayed because countertops weren’t being made or certain factories weren’t open and so some of our projects have been delayed somewhat but we’ve been very blessed not to have anything completely stop on that end. I will say … I’m trying to think of what other areas of … All of our offices, we’ve asked people to go home and work from home so all of our offices shut down for a period of time. The only big part of our company is a financial portion of our projects and so because lenders weren’t doing certain things and the government wasn’t doing certain things. We work with government money and so we’ve had some things delayed on that end and that’s probably been the biggest setback but also, they haven’t been completely shutdown so I think we’ve been very blessed not to have some major things happen to our company.
Speaker 2:
Backing up a little bit, you reminded me of something that I was thinking about and that comes up quite frequently with JMARK when we’re talking with prospects is nobody likes change or very few people like change. What would you say to somebody who was struggling with this idea of knowing they’re going to be paying more for IT and with that fear of the unknown, like you said putting your eggs in one basket?
Julia Algya:
Yeah, I’d say for us it was a decision on who’s time, it was a time factor. We had to weigh whether we were going to pay someone in-house to manage our company whether they were capable of doing what we needed them to do, whether that was beneficial to us or whether it was beneficial to have a third party and although the expense was more than we had paid in the past we knew that we were going to be required to have certain things in place just from a security standpoint. I think JMARK did a good job of preparing us what we were going to be spending. Our team basically provided us a quote and said, “This is what we think you need with the work that you’re doing and the people that you have and the positions that you have. This is what you need.” So we didn’t walk into it not knowing. We definitely had to say some of this … We had to plan it out basically so it became very much a part of future planning for us. It wasn’t something we though we would do for a short amount of time. It was a long term decision for us.
Julia Algya:
I would say that to consider who’s managing it right now, whether they’re not only qualified but whether they’re a best fit for doing something else. I know that the IT fell into my lap and other people’s laps and it wasn’t something that we were passionate about nor really cared to be doing so for us it was no brainer. We need someone else to be doing it. I think most companies probably have to weigh that whether they have someone capable or whether they don’t.
Speaker 2:
How was the culture of the Vecino Group and how did it match with the culture of JMARK and how much did that play with the decision?
Julia Algya:
From a standpoint of nothing ever being the same, Vecino changes drastically. We’re doing a new project. Right now we’re working on five, six projects so from a standpoint of not ever once size fits all, it’s always going to be this way, things look very differently for us on a weekly, daily basis. I think JMARK’s [inaudible 00:38:15] really stick to one status quo. Things are different for every company. Every company needs different. I think that we felt that you guys were able to meet that need of just providing adaptability to us. Like I said, we have multiple different divisions within our company and so we needed someone that could fit all of those needs. I feel like we’ve meshed very well, communicated very well. Maybe that’s because we’re both in the Midwest and language is the same and all that but I think it’s worked pretty well.
Speaker 2:
Great. Well, I know that JMARK, our prospect have their criteria they go down and JMARK does too. We look at culture of our prospects and clients because we want … One of our values is fun. We want to be able to work with people that can have fun and get things done just like we like to do. Really appreciate you coming onboard and talking about this for a little bit. I think some of the takeaways in my mind that I’ve heard over the last little bit is with bad IT versus good IT it’s really important that you consider the risks, it’s really important that you consider the culture, it’s really important that you consider the productivity of individuals, the preferences of individuals and that you don’t have a perception that spending more will produce less. Thank you so much for joining us and have a wonderful week.
Julia Algya:
Yes, thank you for having me. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for attending this podcast. We hope it has been informative and help convey that at JMARK we are people first and technology second. To learn more and discover additional content relevant to your business please visit us online at JMARK.com or at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You may also call us 844-44-JMARK. Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you again.
