Martello in Motion – Rapid Circle

Rapid Circle has been providing information and communication technology services to organizations since 2008. The company offers cloud workplace and managed cloud services like data center migration, adoption and change management, and other cloud solutions that help organizations cut costs, improve productivity, and contribute to innovation, internal communication, and collaboration.

A specific service that Rapid Circle offers its clients is an assessment of their current Microsoft 365 performance, this includes a report with user experience data gathered by Martello Gizmo, together with Rapid Circle’s recommendations to improve overall service quality.

The company has over 200 employees with offices in Amsterdam, Pune, and Melbourne. Microsoft has ranked Rapid Circle as one of the most important global Microsoft Gold partners for their ability to support customers in their digital transformation journey of Microsoft cloud technologies such as Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics, and the Power Platform. Rapid Circle is responsible for successfully activating more than 300,000 new Microsoft Teams users and for this they earned 2020 Global Partner of the Year for Microsoft Teams.

Situation

In early 2020, COVID-19 created a sense of urgency for organizations around the globe to quickly adapt to a new business model in order to maintain business continuity and minimize the impact of COVID-19 on their business. Organizations had to quickly adapt to cloud-based architectures so that remote end-users could access applications and stay productive.

Successfully implementing cloud-based solutions, such as Microsoft Teams, to corporate enterprises has its challenges as every customer’s environment is vastly different. There are many moving parts in network configurations and all these moving parts can impact Teams’ performance. Whether the customer is a large teaching hospital, university, or enterprise-level manufacturing company, there is a level of performance that is expected with the Microsoft stack.

When performance is sub-standard, the network is often analyzed first and this can be a very lengthy and tedious troubleshooting experience that comes at great costs. At Rapid Circle, technicians, Engineers, and Management from both organizations collaborate to find the root of the issue while business losses are incurred due to the extended implementation time, extra manpower required potential downtime, and reduced productivity of end-users. Existing network performance monitoring (NPM) solutions do not bring enough visibility into the many factors that can influence the quality of experience for the user. The issue is clear – additional visibility and metrics are needed as it relates to the Microsoft 365 user’s experience.

Solution

Rapid Circle decided that they needed a tool that could provide insight into the user experience and the issues causing poor Microsoft 365 performance. After working with many different vendors, they could not settle on a tool that offered clear performance insights and true end-user experience monitoring. Microsoft suggested that they look to Martello Gizmo to assist with quickly discovering and resolving performance issues. Rapid Circle engaged Martello and that is when their service offering jumped to the next level.

Initial testing with Martello Gizmo and the placement of Gizmo’s Robots into the client’s environment provided valuable insights that helped resolve issues that even their clients couldn’t repair after many years of deep investigation. Gizmo clearly showed what can be optimized on the network for a better user experience. Gizmo allowed Rapid Circle’s customers to address performance issues and deliver a positive Microsoft end-user experience. In seeing the clear value that Gizmo provided, Rapid Circle clients then wanted to permanently use Gizmo in their own facilities.

Gizmo’s Scorecard from Rapid Circle

Conclusion

Rapid Circle believes the success of using Microsoft Teams depends on a speedy and careful implementation and the assurance that users get the most out of the resources and the use of a proven approach.

Gizmo offers an impressive competitive advantage for Rapid Circle as it quickly helps them pinpoint network issues and optimizes customer performance, ultimately resulting in satisfied customers.

Rapid Circle continues to use Gizmo to perform network assessments at almost all of their large Dutch universities and several area hospitals and are able to provide transparency and clear insights after migrating to Microsoft 365 applications. Rapid Circle is now able to recognize and measure improvements in many aspects of Microsoft 365 performance.

After performing a thorough network assessment and compiling accurate remediation lists, Rapid Circle is able to confidently convert accounts into lifelong clients. Gizmo offers them an unparalleled advantage over its competitors and has boosted its reputation as an exemplary service provider.