Since its humble beginnings in 1979, I-CAR has grown tremendously in its global footprint. It is formed out of a collaboration across the six segments of the collision repair Inter-Industry. I-CAR remains ahead of the curve in its quest to support and accelerate its critical vision and mission-based work: to equip every person in the collision repair industry with the technical knowledge, skills, information, and solutions necessary to perform complete, safe, and quality repairs for the ultimate benefit of the consumer.
Challenge
During the challenging times of Covid-19, it was critical for I-CAR to equip its remote workforce with Office 365 collaboration capabilities to ensure business continuity. I-CAR has more than 500 users and has remote offices in different geo-locations. Since they are working under different regions and language barriers, communication and collaboration was a big challenge for them.
I-CAR provides collision repair training to more than 14,000 individual businesses and more than 91,300 students annually. They offer 275+ courses delivered through live, online, virtual, and in-shop hands on formats.
I-CAR users who were part of the same domain accessed their local file servers from the main site using a VPN connection which was unreliable due to network latency, and their workflow processes were outdated, including storing the reports on desktop. These processes not only slowed down productivity but also impacted how they service their customers and the overall experience for their staff and clients. Not only did they need more storage, but it also needed a solution that provided its mobile users with more accessibility. It was vital to find a solution that could be available almost anywhere, at any time.
Considering data security change in Staff behavior, developing workarounds such as saving data locally on desktop hard drives and thumb drives. This practice presented serious noncompliance and security risks that could have a serious impact on their business.
Engagement with Cloud 9
I-CAR invests in empowering their mobile workforce of more than 500 users with digital capabilities to work with some of the newest technology as it becomes available.
To make this happen, its global IT organization has been implementing a digital worker program across three broad categories that include foundational technology, productivity, and collaboration.
Migrating from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams offered the advantages of taking collaboration to the team level. But deploying the new product for I-CAR presented its challenges and potential disruption as did introduce the change and fostering its adoption company-wide.
The company turned to Cloud 9 to help it streamline its communications landscape. Cloud 9 is a Microsoft Gold Partner, demonstrating deep technical competency and a strong track record of helping customers safely enable the Office 365 suite of cloud services.
Solution
While Office 365 (O365) delivers incredible mobility, flexibility, and collaboration benefits, it comes with significant responsibilities for configuring and supporting deployments. Cloud 9 simplifies this process with our team’s support that delivers all the benefits of O365 without administrative requirements, giving their business a more secure way to empower their team.
Cloud 9 recommended the Microsoft Cloud, migrating I-CAR files and folders from their file servers to Office 365 SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Microsoft Streams
To ensure Faster Migrations and Quality Deliverables while supporting other Cloud initiatives, Cloud 9 provisioned Office 365 suite – SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive to their 600 users using Automation Scripts.
Cloud 9 built whole I-CAR’s SharePoint architecture, Organization structure, and deployed security policies to administer SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams so that I-CAR can have control as well as protection over their Data. All Cloud 9 support and deployment led to I-CAR’s successful content collaboration and effective communication.