The subsidiary of one of the biggest garage networks in Europe faced significant challenges on their endpoints. These included slow startup times, cumbersome updates, and security concerns. These issues disrupted their operations and impacted efficiency. They needed a reliable, easy-to-manage solution to modernize their endpoints without replacing their hardware. In this discussion with G., the company’s Infrastructure Manager, we explore why he chose ZeeTim, as well as his thoughts on the product and the company after using the solution for a year.
Can you please describe your activity in a few words?
We are a network of car garages, that are like multi-brand repair shop. To sum up, whatever car you have, you can just come to us and we will fix it. Our main expertise is on tires, especially tire change between winter and summer.
We have a lot of lease customers working for big companies, as well as regular customers. We’re pretty big in the Netherlands, we are located all over the country. In every major city, there is our garage.
The people working at each garage use their endpoint for everything: working orders, customer information, invoices, product orders, everything.
The people in the shops are not really tech-savvy. They’re car mechanics, not IT specialists. So, we connect with them remotely every day to help them, take control on the device and so on.
We had a lot of problems with the computers in the garages: Windows updates, slow startup time, security updates… We were looking for a solution to keep our hardware but turn them into a thin client endpoint.
How did you find out about ZeeTim solutions?
I googled my request, and I think that ZeeTim was in the first three hits.
Then I went to your website to look into the details, because I wanted to make sure that the product that you were using was right for us. And I must say that your website was pretty clear about it. So, I sent in a contact form on the website to ask for some more information.
We were already looking into Horizon or Parallels for our solution in the office, so we wanted a software that was compatible with these two. I had also visited some of your competitors’ websites.
Did you test other solutions apart from ZeeTim?
Yeah, but I must say that the first contact I had with you was a very nice one.
You explained everything. We tried your OS out on one of our desktops, and it was doing the job as we wanted it to do.
I’m pretty much a guy who follows his gut, so if I have a good contact with a company and the product, I go for it. And of course, I looked into the customers you already had, and that was really professional.
What issues did you meet during the testing / PoC phase? What do you think could be improved about it?
No, I must say that I think it worked like a charm. It was really straightforward.
We did have some problems with typical piece of hardware that didn’t work the first time. But then, well, the support was also great.
What made you choose ZeeTim over other solutions?
Well, what I really liked is that you guys helped us from the start. You never talked about any payments or pricing, because before we go into a contract and so on, we need to decide if the product is okay. So, I really like that I could test it and I got the support before we were real customer.
When we called, we were helped. When we mailed you, you mailed back. When we had an appointment, the appointment went as planned. I always say, “a company that says what they do and do what they say”, that’s what I like.
And in terms of features, in terms of the product itself. Is there a reason why you chose ZeeTim, compared to others?
Well, I really liked the central management because we have hundreds of endpoints to manage, so we really liked the central platform, where we could centrally push out updates and manage it just like that. That was one of the main things that we needed. We wanted to have the easiest support for all these machines.
Because the reason that we changed from the thick clients to the thin clients was management and time that we wasted on all these PCs. So, we really needed to make all that time much shorter, and it made it much easier to manage. And I think that ZeeTim is doing that great.
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What was your experience of the rollout over all of your stores? Do you think the deployment process could be improved?
We did have some issues, some technical issues with some devices. We tried to solve it together with your team and the support was also great there.
Do you think the deployment process could be improved?
We used the centralized deployment process you guys provided. We just placed a new file in the folder, and then it would roll out the network, and that worked great.
It’s been sometime now since the rollout. So, what’s your overall impression about the product? Is it working fine? Do you have some problems that you would like to talk to us?
No, I think that we’re really satisfied. The only problem I had, you responded really quickly with an update. So, we installed the updates, and after that, yeah, it didn’t happen anymore. I really need stable software. People need to trust that it’s a robust solution and not something you have to pray for that it works.
What is your overall impression of the team and service?
No, I think it’s very good because it feels really personal. It feels like we can just email you guys, and you will respond to it. No complicated ticket systems or long waiting time, I really like that. I don’t see any improvements there. We really like the personal touch that you guys have.
Apart from the endpoint problem, what are your day-to-day concerns or projects in the coming months/years?
The setup of this new endpoint solution was a big challenge. I must say that with ZeeTim, we have much less problems. All the problems we had with Windows endpoints are gone now, and that’s great. It’s much easier to change a device if it is broken. So, for our part, it’s running really smooth and I don’t have any real challenges.
I have talked with your team about the other solutions you propose and those are things that are still in the back of my mind. Maybe we’ll get back to you for that in the future.
Test ZeeTim thin clients for free
ZeeTim has empowered numerous companies to transform their old PCs into secure, efficient thin clients. With our operating system, endpoints become more secure, and IT teams can manage them remotely from anywhere using our intuitive endpoint management tool. This results in enhanced efficiency, strengthened security, and significant time and cost savings.
You too can upgrade your IT infrastructure and experience these benefits. Convert your PCs into ZeeTim thin clients and see the difference. Test ZeeOS today for free.