Laplink PCmover Helps Stó:lō Service Agency Drastically Reduce Time Needed for PC Migrations While Streamlining Process and Saving Money

Benefits of Laplink PCmover Enterprise 

• Reduces time required for PC migrations and upgrades by 75%
• Automated data transfers eliminate manual processes
• Increases IT team’s efficiency, enabling it to manage more projects

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Stó:lō Service Agency (SSA), a nonprofit that supports 11 First Nations bands in British Columbia, provides a variety of services, including healthcare, employment training, cultural services, daycare, and senior care to the Stó:lō and the Aboriginal communities throughout the S’olh Temexw. The agency’s IT team supports about 250 staff and 350 computers. Due to the nature of the nonprofit’s work, they support several custom database applications, a wide variety of web-based applications, and healthcare applications.

Garrett MacAskill, network administrator for SSA, oversees the IT team and the agency’s overall systems. He is responsible for PC migrations, upgrades, and maintaining network systems. Due to the time-intensive manual process the agency used to manage PC migrations in the past, he was on the lookout for a solution that would help SSA reduce the amount of time and effort it was taking for its IT team to complete PC upgrade projects. For example, it would typically take up to 8 hours for SSA’s IT team to complete a single migration for a replacement workstation.

“Our primary challenge was the enormous amount of time involved with managing our PC upgrades and migrations because we would be manually copying over profiles, custom applications, and files for days. The time and effort spent — on top of our concerns about accuracy with all of the data and applications transferred over — was a big challenge for us. Fortunately, I found PCmover, and it has significantly reduced the time that we need to spend on our PC migration projects and improved the accuracy of all of the transfers. We had previously been using Microsoft User State Migration Tool (USMT) for copying profiles over, but it wasn’t as comprehensive or as reliable as PCmover.”

Laplink Software’s PCmover solution automatically transfers data, applications, files, and settings during SSA’s PC migration projects and has significantly reduced the amount of time needed to complete PC refresh projects by streamlining the process for the agency. Before using PCmover, a significant amount of time was lost to intensive manual processes. It resulted in several hours of non-productive downtime with negative impacts to both the end users and the IT team. It was such a problem, that users would have to plan for the downtime and lost productivity s.

According to Garrett, “On an ongoing basis, we have many other IT projects to work on, like maintaining our servers and security issues that we need to address. Since we were previously manually transferring data and applications over from old PCs to new PCs, it was a big time suck and distraction. PCmover allows us to have time back in our day to stay on top of everything we need to be doing with our IT infrastructure, and it gives us better peace of mind.”

The agency will soon be migrating over 350 desktops and laptops to Windows 11, and Garrett expects the project to go smoothly with PCmover. Because of the time-savings, he is looking forward to the IT team having more than enough time to simultaneously complete crucial IT projects alongside the ongoing monitoring of the agency’s systems.

“PCmover has literally saved us weeks of time that we would have had to previously spend focused on manually transferring over data, applications, and files from old PCs over to new PCs during deployments.”

In addition, PCmover has helped SSA achieve better productivity and less downtime during migrations while also providing for increased standardization of the migration process. SSA’s IT team now spends less time fixing bugs related to improperly migrated applications — a common problem that use to occur frequently before adopting the use of PCmover. Their PC migration process is now also significantly less disruptive to employees and the agency’s IT team.

About Laplink Software

Trusted for over 40 years, Laplink continues to be a global leader in consumer, SMB, and enterprise PC migration software, and has earned the loyalty and trust of millions of organizations and customers worldwide. The company’s PCmover software saves time and budget, reduces migration risks, and increases efficiency. Only PCmover’s proprietary technology includes full selectivity that transfers data, applications, and settings from an old PC to a new one, even if the two PCs run different versions of Windows. The privately held company was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.