Use more image captions as often as possible involved taking the computer out of an enduser ’ s hands for 4-8 business hours – and significant manual tasks for our IT team . “ We quickly identified we would need an army of IT staff to meet this need , if we did not completely rethink our tools and processes .” New processes were devised – and it involved automating “ pretty much anything and everything ”. The process now starts with an automated survey , which gives each user advance notice that they ’ re due to receive a new machine soon . In that survey , colleagues choose from approved models to meet their needs . “ Some prefer a specific brand , some want a larger screen and some want a lightweight model for example ,” Zung says .
The user also selects where they want their new laptops shipped – rather than having to come into the office and schedule time with an IT staff member . At the heart of the configuration and build process , we leverage cloud services from Microsoft including Autopilot which allow the user , within 30 minutes after powering up , to be up-and running for most of the applications they use . In terms of returning their old machine , they ’ re given a short grace period to ensure everything is working properly , and then they use a supplied shipping label to return their old laptop to A & M where it is securely cleansed and disposed of .
“ We ’ ve gone from spending 20-40,000 hours of lost hours per year for our users to a fraction of that . When you ’ re in a consulting firm , that ’ s a lot of hours to put back into serving our clients .”
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