Case Study: Parisi House

Stabilizing a network and instilling trust with a small nonprofit

About Parisi House

Founded in 1994, Santa Clara, CA-based Parisi House is a nonprofit residential substance abuse treatment facility specifically for women with children. The unique 42-bed facility provides housing and treatment services to parenting women and their children for up to six months.

“Ricoh IT Services was very thorough and really listened to us. They came back quickly with a proposal that detailed what they could do for us and what was lacking in our network. It was very impressive.”
Executive Director
Parisi House

Challenge

Parisi House had long been dissatisfied with the service from their IT service provider. As a smaller customer, they often felt like a low priority compared to some of the provider's other clients, thanks to:

Slow response times.
No clear timeline for resolving issues.
Projects frequently being put on hold.
Unpredictable costs.
Poor communication

It was clear that Parisi House required a better resource. And since they were a nonprofit, they also needed a new provider that could make the most of a challenging budget.

We initially provided Parisi House with their multifunction printer (MFP). However, when our account person learned of their issues, Ricoh IT Services was called in to help find solutions that fit their needs and budget. We worked with their team to find an affordable pricing structure that provided the technology and services to keep their facility running smoothly.

Solution

Our first task was to conduct a Network Healthcheck to identify their network’s vulnerabilities and see how we could fix them.

Based off our findings, we implemented solutions that included:

24/7 remote monitoring and HelpDesk
Remote mediation
Antivirus/anti-malware software updates
OS updates
End-user device management
Basic server and basic application administration and reportin

And when cost issues forced Parisi House to postpone plans for a new backup server, we created an interim file backup process until they could afford a permanent solution.

To make up for the delays caused by their previous IT provider, we worked nights and weekends to stay on track and to avoid disrupting Parisi House’s work during the day.

Since slow response time was a major concern, we assigned a specific IT Services engineer to their account. And in the event he wasn’t available, we also conducted a detailed site survey so another engineer could help out.

To address their concerns, we held monthly meetings with the staff during the first three months of the contract, and quarterly reviews thereafter.

Result

The switch to Ricoh IT Services provided an immediate impact on Parisi House’s operations.

Problems occurred less frequently, and we responded quickly when they did happen. Their assigned engineer has even been known to go above and beyond his scheduled duties by training staff members even when it's out of the scope of his visit. With the network running smoother, Parisi House is now working with us to find a permanent backup solution that includes onsite primary backup and secondary cloud-based backup for redundancy.

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