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Company Overview
Russell Investment Group, a global leader in multi-manager investing, offers a full range of investment services to retirement plans, foundations, endowments, and investment plans of all types. Russell’s investment programs provide a manager-of-managers approach based on a research-driven evaluation of outside money managers.
Russell advises clients on more than US$2.4 trillion in assets (as of September 30, 2005) and delivers investment programs to more than 1,900 clients in 44 countries. Clients include the pension plans of global corporations such as AT&T, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, General Motors, and Toyota.
The Challenge
Striving to exceed expectations of clients in 44 countries requires Russell associates to remain accessible to clients and each other no matter where they are. That includes availability before and after “regular” office hours in every region of the world. To meet these demands, the company deployed OneBridge from iAnywhere to improve communications and responsiveness.
As OneBridge was deployed and usage grew, the solution did not scale as well as expected and stretched the ability of the IT group to provide support. In addition, system management became a challenge because of the number of different components that had to be installed and maintained. Before these challenges affected end users, the IT team decided that OneBridge was not the right fit for what the company wanted to accomplish.
Russell Investment Group’s IT team then began searching for a new system to replace OneBridge. The company decided to go with Good Mobile Messaging because of the product’s reputation for providing enterprise-class security, high reliability, and robust management. Good Mobile Messaging also came highly recommended from a number of financial services firms.
Good’s Professional Services Group Helps Solve Unique Challenges After purchasing Good, Russell Investment Group’s IT department began working with Good Technology Professional Services because they knew there were several specific challenges the group could help with.
Russell Investment Group felt that requiring a desktop synchronization for more than 500 Palm® Treo™ smartphones to backup user data or require users to hard reset their devices manually would adversely impact internal customers and result in additional support and administrative burdens for the IT team. Meeting this challenge would require seamlessly deploying Good Mobile Messaging around the world without cradling a single device. In addition, each user profile would have to be saved and redeployed so that the upgraded devices would have the end user’s information and preferences restored automatically.
To address these challenges, Good’s Professional Services group held a two-day workshop with Russell Investment Group’s IT team to discuss strategies and develop a plan of attack.
The outcome was a strategic document that detailed the requirements for making the rollout a success. It included the versions of read-only memory (ROM) and firmware needed, thirdparty applications to be used including UDMH by Palm Powerups to optimize the available memory footprint on the Treo 650 devices, and BackupEZ to allow users to easily back up their personal information and applications, and the required device preferences and settings. Russell Investment Group and Good’s Professional Services group also collaborated on the requirements for a custom application to streamline the rollout of Good Mobile Messaging. The plan was to deploy the application using secure digital (SD) cards sent to each user.
Upon inserting the card, the application would guide the user through the backup of their personal information and settings, hard reset the device to clear OneBridge, upgrade the ROM and firmware appropriate for the device, provision the new Good Mobile Messaging client, install and configure the remaining software, and configure the device using the previous preferences and settings including button mappings specific to Russell’s needs.
Based on the strategic document application requirements, Good Technology Professional Services created a prototype for the proposed solution. The prototype was met with enthusiasm by the Russell Investment Group’s IT department who decided to move forward with the rollout of Good Mobile Messaging using the custom application.
The Results
Once all of the pieces were in place, the rollout to more than 500 users around the world including the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, was simple and efficient. Every geographic location was able to complete its rollout within just one to two weeks after receiving the SD cards. In addition, over 90% of the end users completed the process with no IT support or involvement required, saving Russell Investment Group significant time and money to support the rollout.
According to Greg Nelson, Senior Technology Consultant for Russell Investment Group, and lead for the Good Mobile Messaging project, “I believe we are the first organization to be able to backup user’s data, upgrade the firmware and OS, remove the old synchronization product, install the new wireless messaging product, and restore the user data without requiring a cradle connection.” Based on the success Russell Investment Group had with the process, Good developed a service to help other customers with their upgrades. The service allows customers to easily back up user data including favorites, bookmarks, call log, and the SMS database, and then restore that information to the device once the upgrades are complete.
Now that Russell Investment Group has been using Good Mobile Messaging for a few months, the company is experiencing the results they originally expected from a mobile email solution. Employees are able to stay in constant communication with one another and with clients, helping to improve productivity and customer service. One user commented, “The improvement in productivity between client meetings has made all the difference. With OneBridge, it would take almost an entire cab ride to sync new Outlook content.
Now with Good synching automatically, I can hop into a cab and respond to key emails quickly. This allows me and other Managing Directors to discuss critical business opportunities and make educated decisions while on the road. In our old environment, these discussions had to wait until people were in the office.” Looking back on the migration, Nelson said, “This has been one of the smoothest, most well executed projects I have had the opportunity to lead. Planning, coordination, support, and communication were all excellent. With the help of Good’s Professional Services group, we delivered a superior product in a manner that had little to no adverse impact to our customers.”
John Stingl, CTO for Russell Investment Group added, “From my perspective this has been one of our best technology upgrade efforts yet. We have a very satisfied user community with the Good Mobile Messaging implementation with accolades coming in from all parts of the organization as a result of the efforts of this team and beyond.”
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