Client Overview

Founded in 1989, K-12 publishing company Teachers’ Curriculum Institute (TCI) had gotten by for years with an in-house IT team. As the market and their business evolved over the years, they began steadily migrating their systems to the cloud. The more systems they migrated, the more COO Ellen Hardy found that their IT set-up, which seemed so capable a few years ago, was becoming rapidly obsolete, and that they needed something more strategic and agile.

Tasked with the goal to modernize and simplify their IT situation, Ellen set out to find a solution that would fit her company’s needs. Some of these needs were service-based, like handling device procurement and on/offboarding, and some were technical requirements, like needing to support both Macs and PCs and integrate with Slack. Electric was a great match in both these regards, fitting in nicely with their tech stack and taking on the services TCI wanted to outsource. But what really sold Ellen was the visibility provided by Turbine into their IT health — a visibility she hadn’t had with her in-house team. “We thought about going with a local provider, but without a tool like Turbine, we would have ended up where we started, trusting them with our IT needs, and not having any visibility on our end.”

After signing on, Electric worked to modernize and simplify TCI’s IT. This involved taking over procurement and provisioning of devices and apps, including purchasing their Microsoft and Google licenses. “Anything that allows us to simplify our technical support is such a huge win for us, so passing off Google and Microsoft license procurement to Electric was a real benefit.” From a hardware perspective, Electric replaced their monitors and desktops with laptops, which proved invaluable to Ellen once the pandemic hit. “Had we not made the transition, everyone would have had to take their desktops home, and I don’t know how we would have supported them.”

Electric also helped TCI take on various strategic projects, such as a network cleanup which doubled their internet speed, and implementing Malwarebytes on all their devices. Previously they’d used an EDR tool, but Ellen had no visibility on where it was being implemented or whether it was being monitored. “Though Electric manages Malwarebytes, having the visibility of Turbine allows us to now personally make sure that we’re being consistent in how we were securing devices.”

With Electric, TCI has simplified their IT enough to transition management from two full-time employees to one office manager part-time. Though their IT operations are leaner than ever, they have more visibility than ever before into device health and security, without needing expertise internally. This transition has not only made their operations faster and more efficient, it’s saved them upwards of 70% on their IT.