From Entry Level to CEO: Forward Financing Makes Mac Experience Consistent for Everyone

Charlie Klausen believes in making each end-user feel like the most important person in the company. That starts with onboarding.

Lots of IT departments talk about putting users first. Charlie Klausen, IT manager at Forward Financing, really walks the walk. He’s worked for companies where even basics like onboarding new employees was “atrocious.”

“I've heard about people starting and not even getting their computers on their first day.”

So when he started as IT Manager at Forward Financing, his number one goal was to make the onboarding experience for new employees truly great.

Making a Good First Impression

After HR, IT is one of the first points of contact between a company and its new employees, so it’s one of the first ways that those employees find out what kind of company they’ve joined.

“Every new hire that comes on should have an amazing onboarding experience, like they’re the most important person at the company. They're going to perform better knowing how much attention they got in the beginning."

To Klausen, it all boils down to consistency. “I want to have a consistent experience for everyone, whether they’re an entry-level worker or the CEO. That needs to start from the first minute they’re with us and it needs to continue throughout their work with us.”

Every new hire that comes on should have an amazing onboarding experience, like they’re the most important person at the company. They're going to perform better knowing how much attention they got in the beginning.

Charlie Klaussen IT Manager

With Forward Finance gearing up for 30 percent growth in headcount, creating that kind of consistency had to start with giving IT the right tools to do its job, so it could then deliver the right tools to everyone else.

Klausen’s first move at Forward Financing was taking a critical look at the existing device management solution. He discovered that the software they had in place, while certainly robust, was also complex, time-consuming, and dated. He could make it do what he needed, but it soaked up almost all of his time and there were other fires to put out.

Klausen realized he needed to switch solutions before he could start making the user experience as great as it could be.

Less Time on Deployment, More on Strategy

His Kandji trial sealed the deal. “Within 45 minutes, I had my machines 85 percent of the way to zero-touch. Having an interface that made sense and lets you get that far down the road that quickly was a major selling point”.

Support was another: During that trial, he learned that, when he had a question, he got an answer fast.

With the new tools in hand, Klausen and his team were able to start realizing his goal of delivering amazing experiences to Forward Financing’s employees. That starts with delivering new Mac computers to new hires. Charlie says they can deploy a Mac in three clicks and 15 minutes; it took 90 minutes in his old solution.

"If we need five people onboarded next week, it’s not a problem, because we can spin up those boxes quickly. We had three machines die on us last week—two with broken screens, one with water damage. I said, if you can come into the office, you can have a new machine within an hour. We look like superheroes."

And those computers are set up the same way for everyone, delivering the consistency that Klausen wants.

I now get to think about, what else can we create? What else can we simplify? What else can we do better? Where else can we automate things?

When a new team member opens the box and turns on a new computer, Liftoff kicks off, keeping the user fully informed about what’s happening in that initial launch. After that, Kandji’s automations keep things configured the way Klausen wants them. And Self Service saves everyone time on software deployments.

"You need Google Drive? Instead of hopping on a Zoom call to walk through a download and install, or having them go to the web and click on things that I don't want them to click on, we just have them open up Self Service and click Install."

With the time his team has saved on deployments and ongoing management, “I now get to think about, what else can we create? What else can we simplify? What else can we do better? Where else can we automate things?”

“Kandji has allowed me to expand my thinking.”