Advania Hi5: unfailing competitiveness and profitability with upKeeper

We sat down with Christer Granberg, head of sales at Advania Hi5, to talk about modern client management. Read on to find out what kind of challenges and possibilities he sees in the present and future:

– We want to offer our customers and ourselves a simple and reliable tool for managing computers and keeping them updated. It must be easy for consultants to learn to work with the tool. With upKeeper we get all that and can even give end-users the possibility to update certain applications on their own. This makes life easier for help desk staff as well as enables them to assist users quickly and effectively.

– The number one challenge within IT today is how to keep up. To know what kinds of tools are available so you can make the right choices in an ever-changing technological landscape. On top of that you’re facing security challenges such as ransomware and cryptolocker – to name but a couple. When you’re affected by these, all you want is to get back to normal again as soon as possible. One way to secure going back to a clean and working computer is re-installing it, and upKeeper is just perfect for that. A few clicks and a coffee break later you can come back and start working on a re-installed machine.

– These days it’s more and more unusual for users to have administration permissions on their computers. This in turn can put a strain on the internal help desk, which often has to handle a lot of support tickets where users just want to download and install an application, like an electronic identification system (BankID in Sweden) or an additional web browser. With upKeeper you can package a tested and working version of any application and make it available so that users can easily choose which ones to install. No local admin permissions are necessary and you also get the following advantages:

• Make sure that the version of the application is tested and works together with other applications in your organization.
• Avoid the security risks that come with giving a user administration permissions on a computer.

With upKeeper it’s also very easy to keep track of all devices within your organization. You know what’s out there, how much memory there’s left and can find out quickly when it’s time for an upgrade.

All this, i.e. user support, inventory, updates, is something which has to be done in addition to everything else you work on. IT should be a means to an end more than anything else – and upKeeper is just that.

– It is important to us to be able to trust and rely on our partner and build strategies together. We want to offer a competitive product with which we feel confident on the market while also making a profit from working with it. With upKeeper, we know that we can be effective for our customers which turns into profitability for us. So it’s good for everybody involved.

– Having an impact on the development and new features within the product is also crucial for us. And another thing we like about user meetings such as upKeeper Open is that the upKeeper team is visible for the customers. Meeting the people and seeing the different roles behind the product makes it both more tangible and accessible.

– We created our workplace service EasyClient utilizing upKeeper. It has proven a great success for us and been of tremendous value for our customers. Basically we have taken over all the boring and time-consuming tasks from our customers. They install their applications and computers on their own but we maintain the tool so it always works and is in top shape. I like to compare it to a rental car. Someone else makes sure the car is serviced, cleaned and takes care of it, but I’m the one driving it. So while someone else makes sure everything runs smoothly, I get all the fun and benefits!