Case Study: Girl Scouts Heart of Central California (GSHCC)

See how GSHCC refreshed its IT infrastructure with cost-effective solutions.

About Girl Scouts Heart of Central California

Girl Scouts Heart of Central California (GSHCC) serves nearly 28,000 girls and 10,000 volunteers in 18 counties. GSHCC’s program center is located in Sacramento, with additional offices located in Stockton, and Modesto.

“The improvement in our IT support has been night and day since we switched to Ricoh. It used to be that I literally spent my entire day on IT issues. Now I hardly have to think about IT at all and can focus on the needs of our girls and the organization.”
Pat Maneely
Assistant Vice President of Support Services, IT and Properties
Girl Scouts Heart of Central California

Challenge

Growth is what every organization strives to achieve. However, in the case of Girl Scouts Heart of Central California (GSHCC), that success became too much for its one IT staff member to handle. The increased workload lead to:

Lost or misplaced documents.
Servers crashing multiple times a day.
Lack of backup support.

The GSHCC originally outsourced IT to a local provider. Since it was purely break/fix maintenance charged at an hourly rate, it was hard to get a consistent handle on what their IT support costs would be. Plus, that model essentially kept the GSHCC reacting to problems — instead of working to prevent future issues.

Since we already had a decades-long relationship providing copier equipment to the GSHCC, they asked us to submit a solution proposal. Our proactive managed IT services plan — complete with fixed costs — excited the executive team and directors, and they selected us as their partner.

Solution

To shift GSHCC to a more proactive approach, we engaged our state-of-the-art Communications, Operations and Remote Engineering Center (CORE ITS).

Once online, we were able to provide:

Around-the-clock monitoring.
Remediation tools to maintain network health and performance.
Firewall monitoring.
Threat management services.

Although GSHCC’s hardware was outdated, we were keenly aware that they were a non-profit with a limited IT budget. By using a consultative approach, we created an upgrade plan that included five new servers and over 90 workstations. More importantly, our strategy also anticipated future needs — all at a price that worked well within their means.

Results

GSHCC’s new network is not only more reliable, but it also allowed us to upgrade their 20-year-old phone system to a Fonality VoIP system, saving them about $30,000 per year. ($60,000 per year once the system is paid off in five years).

Going forward, we’re working with them to continually make their workflows more efficient. For example, camp attendees will now fill out forms online instead of using paper. This helps families save time, and allows GSHCC to process and manage that information more efficiently.

With network speeds, uptime, response to service calls and document workflow all working much more efficiently, GSHCC now spends less time thinking about IT and information issues and puts more towards where it matters — their girls.

Download PDF