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The Challenge: Managing Employee Mobility Tools When IT is Not the Company’s Core Focus Conan Foods is a specialty food distributor with a solid reputation in Quebec for its innovative approach to personalized customer consulting. The company is an experienced leader in food service and distribution, building relationships that aid its customers in the quick-serve restaurant and family dining restaurant segments for over 20 years. With 55 employees, the privately held company turns annual revenue of more than $40 million.

With its core focus in food distribution, Conan Foods is the type of company where IT was initially considered a necessary evil. Its IT environment, led by Adamantia (Tia) Darsaklis, supports the company with a minimal budget, manual processes, and a “find something that will work and we can afford” approach to new challenges.

Migrating the company’s sales force from desktops to laptops presented just such a challenge: While allowing the sales force to function more as the mobile employees they are, Conan Foods wanted to control what was installed on machines leaving the company’s premises. This meant not only

Solution Overview• Customer: Conan Foods Inc.

• Industry: Specialty Foods Distribution

• Geography: Canadian province of Quebec

• Challenge: Manage inventory, security and control of new, company-owned laptops and smartphones

• Solution: MaaS360 Mobile Device Management

• Results:

• Complete inventory and security management for laptops

• Transformed company’s smartphone policy from subsidizing employees’ purchases of uncontrolled phones to providing employees with company-owned and controlled iPhones

• Automated inventory, security and control of all end-user devices

• Enabled the company to support employees with the best tools to perform their jobs

• Improved IT support for all end-user devices, while reducing workload and cost

Managing Mobility Tools with MaaS360

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having to maintain an inventory of the laptops manually, but physically checking OS updates and applications to verify what was on them as well. “We just didn’t have the time or resources for that,” explained Tia.

As for smartphones, the company’s approach at the time was to help subsidize employees’ purchases of their own phones. Without the knowledge of MaaS360’s capabilities, the company was unaware that it could force phones to have a minimum OS version, restrict and deploy applications, and enforce compliance with corporate security policies.

The Solution: Visiting www.maas360.comTia occasionally received Fiberlink, an IBM company promotional emails about MaaS360 Mobile Device Management, and the laptop management issue caused her to finally investigate. A visit to www.maas360.com soon had her thinking, “Hey, we really need this.” Further Internet research repeatedly brought her back to the same conclusion.

“We like all the features that MaaS360 offers—the automation of device inventory and security, the reporting, the notifications, and the remote wiping of applications or entire devices,” said Tia. “The fact that we were operating without any of those capabilities helped us choose MaaS360, and with the cloud-based platform, we could afford to choose MaaS360.”

Once access to MaaS360 service was in place, it took Tia only a few days to enroll all of the company-owned devices, which at the time consisted of laptops and desktops. Management of iPhones soon followed after Conan Foods began using MaaS360. Seeing how the company could gain complete control of inventory, security and applications on mobile phones, it replaced its subsidies for employees’ personal phones with corporate phones.

As an IT shop with few resources, Tia had only one place to turn with any MaaS360 startup and ongoing operational questions—Fiberlink’s 24/7/365 Support. “On a scale of one to 10, I give Fiberlink’s customer support for MaaS360 an 11,” said Tia.

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“We like all the features that MaaS360 offers—the automation of device inventory and security, the reporting, the notifications, and the remote wiping of applications or entire devices.

The operational and security advantages we’ve realized since implementing MaaS360 have been huge, especially for IT but for other departments as well. I can’t begin to calculate what Conan has gained in resource efficiencies. MaaS360 is a must-have tool for all companies and definitely cost-effective.

– Adamantia (Tia) Darsaklis, Purchasing Supervisor,

Conan Foods

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The Benefits: Automated and Centralized Security and Control of ALL End-User Devices, i.e., Laptops, iPhones and DesktopsMaaS360 today gives Conan Foods complete visibility and control of all IT assets for end users, ensuring:

Easy inventory tracking: Once hand-written device inventories are now available for viewing electronically or in a printed report with just a few clicks.

End-user accountability: Updates on all devices are easier to track with MaaS360, which provides alerts on users who have not performed OS updates or haven’t installed a company-recommended application. (For iOS devices, updates and applications are pushed; for Windows laptops and desktops, updates and applications are automatic in that users get the “ready to install” alert.)

Applications management: Managers at Conan Foods can recommend applications, and Tia can push a link to all devices to install them.

Information security: Information on iPhones can now be controlled and remotely wiped if a device is lost, stolen, or if an individual is about to leave the company. USB ports on laptops are locked to protect sensitive information. In the lone instance of a theft—a laptop—Tia was able to provide police with a complete description of the device, inventory and asset information and its contents with a quick MaaS360 report, within minutes.

Updates on all devices are easier to track with MaaS360, which provides alerts on users who have not performed OS updates or haven’t installed a company-recommended application.

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Better use of talented resources: The sales force at Conan Foods, now with secure laptops for customer visits, can improve upon their business model of personalized customer consulting. For IT, there’s no longer a need to be running around the company manually checking end-user devices.

“The operational and security advantages we’ve realized since implementing MaaS360 have been huge, especially for IT but for other departments as well,” said Tia. “I can’t begin to calculate what Conan has gained in resource efficiencies. MaaS360 is a must-have tool for all companies and definitely cost-effective.”

Moving forward, Conan Foods expects to use more of the functionality available with MaaS360, and may investigate purchasing iPads for its sales team. “We can consider anything now, because we know we have control,” explained Tia. “MaaS360 has more functionality and reporting tools than we expected. Even with the features we use, there’s more functionality to be leveraged.”