By William Atkinson
Founded in 1946, Kelly-Moore Paints is one of the largest employee-owned paint companies in the U.S.
Each of the company’s 140-plus stores is expected to operate under the regulations of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which applies to businesses that handle personally identifiable information linked to payment accounts. As a retail vendor using point-of-sale systems, it can be challenging to stay within the PCI regulations. Kelly-Moore wanted to increase security measures and improve service delivery for tech support. “We are a manufacturer and retailer, and are faced with daily compliance issues and questions,” says Vojta Borovian, information systems manager. “In addition, we wanted to improve service to our customers.”
Until recently, Kelly-Moore had used a tool that was satisfactory when it came to security, but it wasn’t consistent for other uses. “Sometimes we could not perform remote control because the client wasn’t there,” Borovian says. “Other times, the user was on a network that we couldn’t get to.”
Kelly-Moore wanted a single-point solution that would address all of these issues. “At first, we didn’t seem to be able to find someone who could deliver all of our needs, particularly those pertaining to security,” says Borovian. “Additionally, we needed a tool with logging capabilities to be able to go back and look at details of what happened during the support sessions, should we have an event.” With a large number of Windows-based computers in the organization, Kelly-Moore needed a solution that could support a variety of devices, both for employees in the office and for remote workers.
A year ago, Borovian discovered Bomgar and its appliance-based remote support software solutions. “What I liked about them was their emphasis on security,” he says. “They didn’t pretend to provide too many tools packaged in one. They really focused on support and delivery for cost centers and service centers that need to have a tool that functions.”
For training, most of Borovian’s team took a class from Bomgar’s online university. However, he noted the technology was very intuitive right out of the box, so the training was easy. “We were able to immediately become productive,” he says. “In fact, it took only a week to transition from the old tool to the new tool. The members of the team who did take the Bomgar training are training the rest of the team.”
With Bomgar’s solution, Kelly-Moore’s IT department can now securely access and fix the stores’ remote systems without worrying about compromising its own or customers’ confidential information.
In addition, according to Borovian, the service performance has been impressive. “Before, the connection rate was between 60 percent and 70 percent,” he says. “With Bomgar, we have been able to connect every single time. We can get to the machine and retrieve all of the data that we need. We are able to view the logs and move them into video using a Flash format, so if we need to view the whole session, it can be done in a matter of minutes.
“The Bomgar solution not only allows us to support those in an office or connected to a company network,” says Borovian, “but gives our IT technicians access to any employee’s machine in any location.”
Borovian envisions two possible future expansions with Bomgar. “One of them is that we might extend the tool to other departments in the company, such as maintenance and HR, which could use the tool for service,” he says. The other would be implementing pre-built Bomgar integrations. “As we assist more customers through the ticketing system, starting remote sessions directly from our ticketing system could provide great value, especially with session recording being logged and fed back into the ticketing tool,” Borovian says.
