With headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand, Squirrel is a quirky brand and trusted mortgage company who’s written over $8 billion in home loans and $100 million in peer-to-peer loans – helping out a lot of Kiwis in the process.
Squirrel Streamlines Device Management and Improves User Experience
Squirrel
Auckland, New Zealand
They’ve been in business for 13 years and counting, starting as one-man team that has now grown to over 70 strong and have also added offerings such as insurance and investing to their service portfolio. Though they’ve maintained a high standard of service for their customers and employees, it wasn’t always as frictionless as it is today.
Finding the Gaps
As Squirrel doubled in size over the past few years, the processes they had in place for onboarding were manual and time-consuming. For each new employee, Human Resources Adviser Gabrielle Ogilvie noticed she was spending four hours or more to get their laptop work-ready. And this was not including mobile devices such as phones on top of that. This involved keeping an office full of hardware and multiple laptops in front of her at all times, as the business grew rapidly over 2020.
Additionally, they did not have a reliable way to view their fleet to keep tabs on software updates or to flag potential device issues. Resolving IT issues and finding fixes used to be a much more hands-on experience, often requiring in-person support. As the company grew, it became paramount to find a better solution.
That’s when Squirrel sourced Imagetext, a local team of IT specialists in NZ who began assisting them with some of their security and technology workflows. After assessing the gaps and specific needs of the Squirrel teams, Imagetext introduced them to Jamf, and how they could improve their efficiency and productivity by giving Jamf a go.
The Jamf Difference
Immediately after making the switch to Jamf, the tech team at Squirrel began to see a big improvement in their previously cumbersome processes. What used to be a completely manual process for wiping, preparing and deploying new devices is now a zero-touch experience that not only provides employees with a seamless onboarding workflow, but also saves the tech team at Squirrel hours of hands-on labor, allowing them to focus on bigger, better tasks at hand.
Jamf Pro has also helped Squirrel launch their Self-Service portal, which they’ve dubbed Squirrel Central, and is now the main hub to empower their employees with resources to make their lives easier. In the past, they didn’t have a central or organized way to see which apps employees were downloading or if their software was up to date which led to technical hurdles.
Now that their customized app store is up and running, all staff have equal access to what they need whether it be localized printers, access to IT support and other vital apps. After moving to Jamf Pro, the tech team at Squirrel were delighted to finally have a robust inventory management solution where they could view all the specs and health of the devices across their fleet.
Continuing Success
With this in-depth view of all devices, however, they noticed that some of their devices were getting a little old and wanted to begin a refresh. Because they were so happy with what Jamf Pro was doing for them, they also used this as an opportunity to see what else the Jamf portfolio could offer them to make their business even better. That’s when they opted for Jamf Connect to integrate with Microsoft Active Directory, making Jamf an essential part of their improved processes as a whole. The next step for them was naturally Jamf Protect, as they wanted to rest assured that their fleet was not only efficient but safe and secure from data breaches or cyber-attacks. Squirrel is happy to have security and compliance taken care of in their new-and improved onboarding experience, which saves both IT and end-users any added stress of maintaining security.
Going from what they described as “an unruly teenager” of processes and workflows to a much more sophisticated setup, Squirrel say they have Jamf to thank. Because of the added visibility into their fleet, IT can not only see how things are operating, but they also now feel like they are starting to better understand the needs of their employees in order to provide them with the tools and support they actually need. This will only help them in the future as they work to innovate and create an even better technological experience for all their staff, no matter where they may be.
We always have kept a high standard of service and support for our employees, but now we can more easily meet their needs as a business.
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