Ekonomipartner Mitt-Nord decided to build its own Microsoft-based Active Directory solution. For client management, they chose upKeeper Manager, an investment that quickly paid off.
“The investment in upKeeper Manager, including implementation, paid for itself within six months. Starting in the seventh month, we’ve realized significant savings in client management thanks to upKeeper Manager,” says Mikael Jenerberg, CIO at Ekonomipartner Mitt-Nord.
Ekonomipartner Mitt-Nord provides services such as accounting and financial reporting, payroll administration, credit management, supplier invoicing, telecommunications, and IT. A large part of the business involves supporting the companies within the Persson Invest Group, which deals in cars, trucks, and buses, and is also active in forestry and property management.
Today, the group is a dealer for Volvo, Renault, Ford, and Dacia—both passenger cars and commercial vehicles—in central Norrland, where operations are run by Bilbolaget. In Malmfälten, in the far north of Sweden, the passenger car business is managed by Eriksson Bil. Volvo’s trucks and buses are operated under the name Wist Last & Buss.
“We’ve saved both time and money with upKeeper Manager. We recouped our investment in six months, and now our client management is much more time-efficient.”
The search for a new solution for system management
Ekonomipartner Mitt-Nord launched two parallel projects: a new AD and a new system management solution. A new AD was needed to build a common structure for the entire group going forward, and the old AD solution was also suboptimal.
“It was pretty complicated to work with because we couldn’t do much on our own. That also made it expensive.”
While they were building the new AD, they looked into alternatives for system management and evaluated five different solutions.
“The evaluation led us to choose upKeeper Manager for client management. It was simply the solution that suited us best.”
Advania stepped in
upKeeper’s partner, Advania, was tasked with building and customizing the structure for the new AD and implementing upKeeper Manager. With upKeeper Manager and its own Active Directory, Ekonomipartner Mitt-Nord now has significantly better control over its network environment and can resolve most issues on its own, without needing to rely on consultants.
“It saves us an enormous amount of time. I’d say we resolve most issues about ten times faster now. It used to take a whole week to install a package of applications; now it doesn’t even take a day. We’ve also become much more flexible.”
Both the IT department and the users are seeing the benefits of upKeeper Manager. Ekonomipartner Mitt-Nord currently has a central Active Directory (AD) along with systems for installing new applications, remotely managing devices, and performing centralized data backups on its own servers. The IT department, which has four full-time employees, is responsible for approximately 650 computers and about 40 servers.
upKeeper Manager was implemented around the same time the new Active Directory was deployed. upKeeper Manager is the tool that automates the installation, reinstallation, and updating of applications and operating systems.
Fast repayment and a better daily life for users
“We’ve saved both time and money with upKeeper Manager. We recouped our investment in six months, and client management is much more time-efficient today. But it’s not just about time and money—the functionality has also improved significantly.”
“Today we have about 70 applications, compared to about 20 before we implemented upKeeper Manager. So here, too, there has been a clear improvement for our users.”
