Chicago MSP Cites Partner Portal for 20% Revenue Increase

Errol Janusz makes no bones about it. SherWeb’s partner portal played a key role in helping him orchestrate a rapid turnaround for one of his major clients. And he can’t ignore the overall benefit: a 20% increase in revenue for cloud services.

Janusz is the president and founder of Edward Technology, a Chicago-based Managed Service Provider. The four-person company provides IT consulting and support to about 45 clients in the greater Chicago area.

Janusz said when half of the 48-person law firm decided to jump ship, the partners and staff were literally put out on the street. He had to come up with a good plan and fast.

“SherWeb’s fast and easy-to-use Cumulus partner portal is how I was able to get the new law firm up and running in just a couple of hours. I did the whole project myself. Turnaround time was 3 days. 30 laptops were configured for users as well as compliant Hosted Exchange email, internet and a custom-built domain controller. I was so familiar with SherWeb, I knew instantly how to create the domain name, get it into Hosted Exchange and get the law office into Office 365 and start cruising right away. I knew the ins and outs of your control panel, which made it that much easier and quicker.“

Client Needed Fast Solution

Janusz said because the new law firm suddenly found itself with no email service, it needed a fast solution to show its clients the new practice was stable.

“They were able to immediately email their clients about the new firm directly from their professional email address and not some temporary Gmail or AOL email. Because they were used to an in-house Exchange server, SherWeb’s Hosted Exchange provided all the same email features they already knew.”

Edward Technology, which has been a SherWeb partner for about two years, also sells Office 365 and other solutions such as antivirus security, firewalls, backups and encryption. One-third of the company’s clients are law firms, health care professionals and accounting firms which must meet rigorous compliance standards.

Janusz said he first learned about SherWeb’s Hosted Exchange services while shopping around for email services several years ago.

”I started balancing out the expenses of on-premises Exchange services to hosted Exchange and it was probably a combination of shopping around and looking at features and then finding SherWeb somehow and then liking the hosted Exchange and the pricing.”

Client Switches from Yahoo Email

Janusz recalled another situation when he was able to convince a client to switch from Yahoo email to Office 365. Six months earlier, he had helped this client rebuild its business after a huge storm ripped the roof off his office building and left everything covered in about 18 inches of water.

“They were using Yahoo email and we switched them to your Office 365 platform. That was about six months ago and they love it. I mean comparing that Yahoo web mail interface to Outlook, they said it’s 100 times better. Now they can do the calendar and contact sharing as well.”

Old School Approach to Technical Support

Edward Technology provides both off-site and on-premises support, which might be considered a tall order for a four-person company. However, Janusz said it’s all a question of good organization.

“We have the old school etiquette of coming on-site. A lot of people don’t see their IT support for maybe 3 or 4 months. We’re a little more proactive to come on-site and go through any reports that we’re sending them and just see how things are going. So everyone in our company will come on-site.”

So what does Edward Technology like most about working with SherWeb? He keeps coming back to the partner portal.

”The Cumulus interface is really good. It’s fast; it’s organized. It’s straightforward on the pricing and each plan with the description, so that’s good. Other good things about Cumulus is that it’s clean or more simple than other portals. With other portals, there’s this constant paragraph of nonsense that I don’t need to be reading and it confuses you. This information doesn’t need to be here and the page is so crowded and that’s why Cumulus is good. This is what you need. It’s just quick, accurate, efficient technology that’s keeping me with you!”