4it Helps This South Florida Social Services Center Finally Solve Their Chronic IT Problems
Family Resource Center of South Florida was established in 1975 to provide foster care, adoption, and community mental health services. With 160 employees, they operate in the privatized child welfare sector, working with children that have been neglected, abused, or abandoned.
Long-Term IT Problems Killed This Social Services Center’s Productivity
Before working with 4it, Family Resource Center of South Florida relied on an internal IT technician, to mixed results. They experienced downtime and system crashes on a regular basis and often had to call in 4it to fix the problems their internal IT couldn’t handle.
“At one point we hired somebody in-house, and what happened was that there would be periodic shutdowns,” says Oren Wunderman, Executive Director, Family Resource Center of South Florida. “4it was always the backup, and they’d come and fix it. Finally, we fired him and hired 4it as our sole support.”
Then They Called 4it To Fix Their IT Problems For Good
Once they hired 4it as their fully outsourced IT support, Family Resource Center was able to overcome chronic IT issues that had been plaguing them for years. They discovered three big problems with their previous IT technician:
- He had improperly configured their systems
- He wasn’t handling the maintenance tasks
- The poor configuration and maintenance led to chronic IT problems
“It turned out there were bugs in how he had set it up, and it was going to crash a couple of times a week because of his incompetence,” says Oren. “It was nice when 4it came in because they unraveled the glitches, and the quality of our service went way up.”
This Social Services Center Finally Had IT Support They Could Believe In
For the first time, Family Resource Center had an IT team they could rely on to show up on time, solve issues for good, and be available when the next issue came up.
“They came in, and I was impressed that they knew what they were doing, they showed up when they said they were going to show up, and they got things fixed,” says Oren. “I was so impressed I actually asked them to set up my house too.”
With most of the support-level IT problems fixed, 4it moved towards long-term development and optimization of their systems. As Family Resource Center grew, they required more IT resources to continue operating productively.
Furthermore, the State of Florida regularly developed and expanded the cybersecurity requirements for social services organizations like Family Resource Center.
4it Helped This Social Services Center Budget For Major IT Upgrades
Unfortunately, upgrading and growing an IT environment can be an overly expensive process. Investing in additional infrastructure, cybersecurity software and hardware, and adding new devices for their growing staff would cost thousands of dollars.
Like so many organizations, Family Resource Center couldn’t afford to make all these changes at once — thanks to 4it, they didn’t have to.
“Most years I was operating with a thin budget, and needed to make upgrades incrementally, and they never pressured me to go beyond my means,” says Oren. “It worked out well.”
4it Goes Beyond The Call of Duty
4it doesn’t just provide IT management and direct IT support — they go above and beyond to help wherever they can. For example, on occasion, Family Resource Center will be served a subpoena by a lawyer for an ongoing lawsuit.
Finding the exact documentation required isn’t easy for their staff, who have had difficulty navigating their database. Fortunately, they have 4it on their side.
“None of us in-house really knows how to search our database, so I get in touch with one of 4it’s engineers, I send them the subpoena, and what I’m impressed with is that they help us with these really tough assignments, and they do it around the clock if necessary,” says Oren. “They get it done on short deadlines.”
4it Is This Social Services Center’s Trusted IT Problem-Solver
To this day, Family Resource Center’s staff enjoys a properly scaled IT environment, and fast and effective support whenever they need it. They even brought on a 4it technician to work out of their office on a part-time basis, so that they have immediate onsite support when necessary.
“When we needed repairs, if it could be done through the helpdesk that was fine, if not, they would send somebody out the same day, which was great,” says Oren. “Now we have someone from 4it with us three days a week.”
