TTx Talk is a video podcast, with your host, Nate Petry – TTx VP of Sales. Nate has conversational interviews with experts in their respective fields. On today’s episode, Nate wanted to change things up and talk with one of our customers, Quality Castings. Nate is joined by Jennifer Elsass – Quality Castings CFO – and together, they walk through Quality Castings’ buyer journey on becoming a TTx customer.
What changed in your business to cause to consider TTx?
IT manager retiring caused us to have to look for someone to fill that place.
How did you hear about TTx?
Referral from Chad Voller – BMF CTG Managing Director – recommended TTx.
How did you search for a solution?
Did some research on whether it would be cost effective to hire a new IT manager or a managed service provider. It made more sense to go with a managed service provider and with the referral from a trusted advisor, TTx was right for us.
What has exceeded your expectations since working with us?
During the pandemic, we had to send our employees home, just like a lot of other businesses had to do the same, and we rolled out Office 365 during this, and TTx just made the transition to the new software smooth. And they did this all while working remotely as well.
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TTx Talk Episode 6 Transcript
Nate: Welcome to TTx Talk, I’m Nate Petry, Vice President of Sales at TTx, and this is Jennifer here at Quality Castings. Thanks for joining us.
Jennifer: Of course, thank you for having me.
Nate: Yeah, so, Jennifer and Quality Castings has been a customer of ours for about a year and a half. And we’d love to just to take a few moments of this time to talk about our relationship together.
Jennifer: Sure.
Nate: Cool. So, wanted to talk to you about your decision to go with TTx. So there is some things that changed in your environment, when looking for a managed service provider, correct?
Jennifer: Correct. So about two years ago this time, our IT manager was letting us know that he was planning to retire in the next six to eight months. We had converted to a new software and now that that was done, he was ready to retire. And so we were looking for a, sort of a replacement option for our IT manager.
Nate: What, how did you find out about TTx what made you consider us?
Jennifer: So shortly before we actually started our relationship, I had a network security assessment performed by BMF CTG under the direction of Chad Voller, who’s their managing director. He knew that our IT manager was looking to retire. And I had mentioned him about trying to find maybe some young kid that could come in and do a few things. And he actually provided an alternative to us and said, have you ever considered doing a managed service agreement? I’ve got a great contact for you and he actually connected us, , after that meant that street was up almost performed.
Nate: Yeah, we, we love referrals. So, we love our relationship with Chad and appreciate that. And that’s how the best business has done is that, so you really didn’t evaluate a lot of other things.
Jennifer: We didn’t, I personally spent time, you know, doing some analysis on whether or not it made more sense to try to find someone to replace, and pay salary and benefits to, or in my opinion, I thought we were going to get a more elevated or more experience out of, and more expertise out of going with a managed service provider where I have an entire group of people that I can utilize, um, to, to help us with our IT needs. And after we met that first time, we had very good dialogue and discussions about how Quality Castings was founded and the way the TTx was founded really resonated with myself and with our president and vice-president, and we felt there was a very good connection there. And so after that initial meeting, we really didn’t pursue other managed service providers at that time. I felt like there was definitely a cost benefit, on top of just the relationship and expertise is that we were going to save money by hiring experts, to be our IT, as opposed to finding another person to come in and do the work.
Nate: Yeah, yeah. Our goal is to be the most trusted partner, but that first contract, that first engagements more based on faith than it is trust.
Jennifer: No, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I was very fortunate, I believe to have had Chad Voller who is, and has been a trusted advisor of mine for several years now, make that connection. And when I have a trusted advisor recommending their trusted advisor to you, you sort of feel really competent just going into that first, that first meeting that the relationship will work out.
Nate: Well. Has anything exceeded your expectations when working with us?
Jennifer: So it’s 2020. Uh, so a lot of things have happened in 2020. I will say, we didn’t expect to have a pandemic and the day that they shut her right down, we send a bunch of people home and I will forever be grateful, for TTx being able to get us all set up and ready to rock and roll with getting all of my people working from home. We didn’t have that. I have a workforce where people traditionally work here at their desks in their spaces. And I don’t think within that time period, because I know that we probably were the only ones who were going through this at the time, immediately got all of my people ready to go and ready to work from home on the next day. So I will forever be grateful for that, and then, we actually migrated over to Office 365 in the middle of this pandemic,
Nate: Good timing.
Jennifer: Which it was. I pushed it off for about eight weeks from when we were supposed to do it. because I’m like, I just can’t do this to my people, sending them home. And I just didn’t have the confidence in myself to make sure that this is going to happen. And I finally said, you know what, we’re in the middle of this. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. I don’t know how long they’re going to be home. And I said, let’s do it. Let’s get it done. And Scott Rezabeck, he did a phenomenal job for us getting everybody converted over to Office 365, all the tools rolled out. And so that just gave me extra tools to utilize while I had people working from home. And that process could not have gone smoother, considering that he had to work remotely for all of the installs and the people that he worked with, to get them up and going particularly in this environment. So, I mean just far exceeded my expectations.
Nate: Yeah, it was interesting when the pandemic happened, as leadership came to me and the decision not to make any special announcements to our prompts or how we treat people and we grow, we want to be consistent. Right. And so we were just fortunate that we could be consistent through that pandemic. And thanks for those kinds of words. It wasn’t easy. It was hard on us.
Jennifer: I am, I’m absolutely sure as I will be very grateful for that. And we have utilized a lot of TTx resources over these last eight months of people having worked from home and me not being able to, you know, go touch a computer somewhere or to do things we’ve really had to rely on, you know, TTx to be there for us and not once have they wavered in any of the support that we’ve gotten from your team.
Nate: Well, thanks so much for the time today and spending time with us and sharing your feelings and heart and about our partnership. We don’t take it for granted and it means a lot.
Jennifer: No. Well, we appreciate everything that you guys do for us and keep us running.
Nate: Thanks, cheers!