Based out of Indiana, Eight Eleven Group is a parent organization to three professional services and consulting companies: Medasource, Brooksource, and Calculated Hire. While these companies are known for their excellence in providing services to distinct departments across multiple industries, they all rely on Eight Eleven Group for seamless operational support. Eight Eleven Group has been steadily expanding over the past decade and now supports a headcount of over 900 employees.
AssetSonar, coupled with Zendesk, empowers Eight Eleven Group with complete hardware asset management while optimizing its employee service and overall IT asset management.
Streamlining IT Asset Tracking with AssetSonar
Although Eight Eleven’s team had used an IT asset management system in the past, they kept experiencing challenges due to a lack of integration with the organization’s active directory. Nick Tavassoli, Help Desk Analyst at Eight Eleven, shared that the company recognized the need for a more accessible and efficient software solution that could help transform their asset tracking processes.
“We needed something a bit more in-depth and what drew us to AssetSonar was its integrations with Azure AD and Microsoft Intune. AssetSonar’s integrations were the biggest selling points for us when we were originally sculpting out a product to use,” said Nick.
Third-party integration was a major requirement for Eight Eleven Group because previously they were relying on manual data imports, and so they wanted software that could help automate the processes. Since there was no syncing of data in the backend, none of the information they tracked was dynamic or updated – rendering it inaccurate and unusable over time.
Since implementing AssetSonar across their organization, Eight Eleven is now able to periodically sync data through Azure AD and Microsoft Intune, which helps them automate the information collection process and reduces manual efforts. Nick said,“As Intune syncs periodically and devices get pulled in automatically, we know that nothing gets left behind. This makes our records more accurate.”
Eight Eleven Group’s IT team is now tracking more than a thousand IT assets with AssetSonar, including laptops, desktops, peripherals, and more. Since they collect assets from their national field agents and markets constantly, AssetSonar helps them ensure that every device across the organization is being accurately tracked.
The IT team has also deployed AssetSonar’s network agent on every device, making tracking even easier and more accurate. They receive accurate system data regarding what processor is being used, how much storage each machine has, and similar configuration information that helps them easily troubleshoot their devices. Tracking every device helps the organization optimize the usage of its assets – resulting in reduced clutter and collateral.
While discussing the benefits of accurately tracking IT devices, Nick shared:
“Deploying the AssetSonar network agent is kind of a money saver, time saver, and overall, very efficient use of our assets. It is one of the biggest wins for us!”
Benefiting from AssetSonar Modules
Custom Reports:
AssetSonar’s advanced reporting capabilities allow Eight Eleven Group’s IT team to have an in-depth view of what assets they have and how they are being used. Nick reported that AssetSonar’s custom reports are of tremendous business value to the organization because they enable the IT team to see exactly which devices are being used across the organization.
If any older devices need to be upgraded, they can easily do so to stay at pace with the organizational standards. For example, Eight Eleven Group has a policy in place that requires them to upgrade laptops every four years to keep up with current hardware standards. To stay on top of these upgrades, the IT team creates custom reports every quarter so they can take appropriate actions on time. They simply pull up device reports filtered by the date of purchase instead of combing through sheets of users and devices and then filtering out devices that need to be replaced.
“It is much easier to create a custom report instead of pulling up a more general report that wouldn’t be as editable or as beneficial as this customized report” shared Nick.
Previously, the organization was managing these processes manually, but human error and inconsistent information presented major ongoing challenges. Now, leveraging their existing equipment invoicing process, which is easily importable into AssetSonar, the overall processes became much more effective. While discussing the custom reports the IT team creates, Nick remarked:
“I would say that AssetSonar’s reporting capabilities have improved our time and money savings because we have a better understanding of what assets are out there in the field and what are the ages of these devices. I would say that overall, it has helped us tremendously.”
Custom Fields:
Eight Eleven’s IT team is also making use of AssetSonar’s Custom Fields to add important details about their devices and users. For example, while assigning devices, they add the manager, office location, and department details for each end-user, so if they have any trouble reaching out to a user, they can easily contact their manager. And, since all this data is regularly being synced from Azure, they don’t have to switch between applications while filtering devices or users – they can manage it all from within the software itself.
Tracking across different locations:
Eight Eleven Group has employees throughout the US with its headquarters acting as the center point for shipping out hardware devices to these employees. The organization is also supporting over thirty-two individual markets across the country where they send their devices for repair and maintenance. AssetSonar helps the company keep track of all these devices, in all markets, offices, and remote locations. While explaining the tracking processes for these devices, Nick remarked:
“AssetSonar gives us a seamless way of tracking and is really helpful in maintaining an accordance or accountability of the ownership of these devices.”
Smoother Onboarding and Offboarding
AssetSonar also can facilitate employees’ IT onboarding and offboarding processes, and Eight Eleven Group has leveraged these workf’They have created Custom Fields for their hotspots so they can use unique identifiers (such as IMEI numbers) to help them pick and check out a particular hotspot. They plan on experimenting a bit more with the feature to see how they can create an even more accurate inventory database.’lows in their business processes as well! For example, during the offboarding cycle of an employee, AssetSonar enables the IT team to view the devices assigned to the exiting employee and notifies the team so they can promptly retrieve the devices.
Similarly, during employee onboarding, the team relies on AssetSonar’s integration with Azure AD to sync user information, making device provisioning easier, quicker, and more accurate. Being able to sync user and machine information in just a couple of minutes and provision devices using a straightforward checkout process helps the IT team save time that they can invest elsewhere, and ensure a great first impression and higher productivity for new employees.
Enhanced service management with Zendesk
AssetSonar and Zendesk’s combined solution has greatly improved Eight Eleven Group’s overall service management. With AssetSonar’s panel integrated into the Zendesk application, the help desk employees can scroll to AssetSonar to view relevant information without having to navigate between the two applications. For example, if a service ticket regarding a specific laptop is generated, the help desk team member would need to know the machine, user, and location details to efficiently help the requester. Having AssetSonar’s panel available in the Zendesk ticket saves them time as they have access to all the necessary information to act on the device right away. This integration provides excellent usability through the interface and eliminates the need to switch back and forth multiple times between applications as every detail is immediately available from a single screen. While discussing the business value this integration brings to Eight Eleven Group, Nick explained:
“The fact that we can save a substantial amount of time means that we can spend that time improving our system even more. And these solutions added on top of each other are adding exponential value.”
Eight Eleven Group’s IT team relies heavily on Zendesk for its ticket resolution and all other service management processes. In addition, the team also must ensure that devices are being recycled, updated information is being imported into the system, and all the devices are always accounted for. They are also responsible for the procurement of new devices and invoicing management. Having AssetSonar and Zendesk’s combined solution allows the data to move more seamlessly, making things more fluid and exponentially increasing the team’s production capacity. Nick shared:
“AssetSonar has cut the time I spend on inventory management in half and is saving us the cost of at least half a new employee.”
The future with AssetSonar
AssetSonar’s IT asset management capabilities keep operations running smoothly and help ensure there are fewer bottlenecks so the organization can serve its employees, consultants, and clients as efficiently as possible. Eight Eleven Group’s IT team has just shifted to their new headquarters to better accommodate their ever-expanding workforce and looks forward to exploring more of AssetSonar’s modules and integrations to further automate their asset management processes.
Nick described his experience of working with the AssetSonar team to be a pleasant one. He even went as far as saying, “AssetSonar’s customer success has been really great. They have been really attentive and have been helping with our account management. They have overall exceeded my expectations.”
