Hail the IT hero

Dropbox helps teams spend less time on logistics and more time doing the things they love. Find out how Allen Houchins, Vice President, Information Technology & Workplace Services at Jamf, uses it to stay organized and work efficiently.

Anyone in IT knows the challenges of transitioning people to adopt a new solution. Once people learn something new, they get comfortable and want to stick with it. So when IT has to migrate staff from one platform to another, it often feels like pulling teeth—and we’re seen as the bad guys.

Fortunately at Jamf, we found a way to overcome at least some of that resistance. Listening to our end users and what they want to use at work, rather than forcing them to use what IT installs, when possible, almost always makes everyone’s lives much easier.

Our overall mission at Jamf is to help organizations succeed with Apple. We help IT and security professionals confidently manage and protect their end users’ devices, data, and applications. And the part where Jamf brings extra special value - to both our employees and our more than 71,000 customers around the world, is that we’re able to provide that service without getting in the way of the intended Apple experience. This is a balancing act that’s necessary to keep operations safe and ensure end-user compliance… all while giving that powerful and unique native Apple experience.

We followed the lead of our users

IT cares deeply about our products and platforms, and my team has excellent insight into how we can leverage solutions to serve our customers and company better. When it came to our file sharing and storage solution, however, we were a little off the mark.

The last sharing and storage solution we used worked well for IT and met our needs. But we noticed that employees seemed to naturally gravitate to Dropbox. Almost everyone already used Dropbox for their personal files, and they liked it so much they’d find workarounds to keep using Dropbox.

We were using one of their competitors and without coming out and saying it, our employees were telling us that they preferred using Dropbox.

With adoption and activation lagging with our last solution, it was clear teams and employees preferred Dropbox. We had to decide: Should leadership force the staff to use the platform we determined was best? Or throw our support behind the tools they enjoyed using? After thorough review, we decided it just made sense to secure and enhance their solution of choice rather than force them to stop using it.

The good news was that the migration to Dropbox was pretty simple. Most employees didn't need training or formal onboarding. The only real effort was in transferring our business workflows into Dropbox. After that was complete, everyone was happy.

In this case, everyone wins: IT is the hero that listens to staff; the business is happy because we have a working and cost-effective solution; employees are pleased because they feel heard and no longer have to use a tool that’s not intuitive to them. Now we could turn our attention to enhancing our collective Dropbox experience.

So much more than file sharing

Since switching to Dropbox, we’ve discovered a number of features that make collaboration smarter and more streamlined:

+ Dropbox Paper: We use Paper as a digital space for more transient documents like meeting notes and agendas. Over time, it’s evolved into a kind of scratchpad for ideas. Paper enables multiple people to work on a document simultaneously without overwriting anyone else or wasting time on outdated versions. Being able to add text, images, and other media in one place has improved our real-time collaboration capabilities and helped keep our meetings on time and on topic. On top of these benefits, Paper offers a great mobile experience—perfect for when we’re on the go.

+ Dropbox Capture: Capture allows users to record the screen, camera, and microphone at the same time. Think about the last time you had to report a problem to tech support. There’s usually a lot of back and forth to help IT understand the problem. With Capture, employees can send us a problem report, including a description and a screen capture or recording of the issue as it is happening. IT can almost immediately begin troubleshooting.

Capture has accelerated the change management process because now we can capture the proposed change in a video and talk about it asynchronously via Slack versus having to set up a meeting.

Capture also makes innovation demonstrations faster and easier. Instead of calling a meeting to walk through the idea, developers can demonstrate and describe the solution in action. The difference is an accelerated change management process because people can show, not tell.

A more secure remote experience

Dropbox is great on its own, but the combination of Dropbox, Apple, and Jamf has unlocked powerful security controls, too. Now, protecting business interests and user privacy can co-exist.

Part of the challenge with remote work is the potential for mixing end-user devices designated for personal and enterprise use. Having separate devices can be cumbersome, but using one device for work and personal use can raise some red flags around security, privacy, and compliance. Thanks to the security capabilities of both Apple and Jamf, personal and enterprise data can live on the same device without worry. Dropbox has enhanced our collaborative processes, and the Data Governance Add-On helps us better adhere to compliance regulations, privacy laws, and right of deletion or erasure requests.

What started as an attempt to go with the flow has blossomed into a robust technology tool that works without complaints. IT is happy, our teams are happy, and we can get to the business of serving our customers more efficiently than ever.