Meet JBS

Japan Business Systems (JBS) is an IT solutions provider founded in 1990 upon its “Customer First” principle. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with expert proficiencies across the full IT lifecycle, JBS has also been repeatedly recognized as a Microsoft Partner of the Year.

In 2013, JBS began its partnership with BitTitan, using MigrationWiz to move customer email and data to the cloud. With the development of the new MSPComplete platform, BitTitan offered to help JBS build out a streamlined CSP onboarding service.

During this partnership, JBS discovered new ways to deliver projects, reduce manual tasks, increase visibility, and further its “Customer First” principle.

Delivering a standardized process still relies on “manual” work

JBS recognizes the value in delivering services consistently, as Chiemi Inoue, a Technical Specialist in Cloud Alliance Development, explained. She told BitTitan that her team had been documenting their best practices as written manuals for delivery teams to reference.

Despite excellent documentation, standardization is still a challenge for a company as large as JBS.

Some people have difficulty reading manuals. Projects can get delayed because engineers go to the person in charge for their next steps.

—Chiemi Inoue, Technical Specialist

Sometimes employees take manuals with them when leaving the company.

If a manual vanishes with a former employee, JBS may have trouble performing the work or training a replacement.

Cross-departmental projects are challenging for project managers

Although JBS has been executing profitable services with BitTitan and MigrationWiz, it has not been entirely without struggle for project managers and administrators.

For services that require talent from multiple departments, project managers must coordinate with department heads to decide who is best suited to perform each task. Even with repeatable services, the same engineers don’t always play the same role during each delivery instance. From customer to customer, their involvement may change, depending on their availability and workload.

Once Chiemi’s team kicks off a service, there’s no simple way to follow the task assignments and communicate updates. She told BitTitan that JBS used to hold weekly meetings to sync everyone, but there were too many email messages in between.

The preferred project management tool also varies case by case. Some administrators prefer an internally built tool, while others rely on Microsoft Planner or SharePoint, but the lack of standardization makes it difficult to aggregate data for a cohesive narrative about their delivery practices.

MSPComplete gives JBS unparalleled visibility

JBS started listing their “manual” processes in MSPComplete with prescriptive guidance for every task. With project details in one location, everyone involved has greater visibility into the project status, the owners of each step, and the progress throughout the delivery process.

This is incredibly beneficial for administrators and project managers, who previously relied on email to confirm important details between meetings. In fact, JBS is planning to replace email updates and handoffs with the custom notifications and alerts in the platform.

Protecting our IP is extremely important to our business. Before MSPComplete, everything was in spreadsheets or manual. Now we have a secure repository for our most valuable processes.

—Risa Takeshita, Manager in Partner Alliances and Marketing

A centralized place to see and confirm all tasks, assignees, and progress eliminates the need for various project management platforms used by multiple departments. The consistent use of MSPComplete provides valuable delivery data. With it, JBS will be able to benchmark and improve over time.

JBS expects project profitability will increase

Tracking the exact time to deliver every step of the process gives JBS a new understanding of the exact costs of projects and abilities of different employees performing the same types of tasks. This valuable data helps shed light onto where further improvements can be made to increase profitability for JBS—whether it’s CSP onboarding or other services in MSPComplete.

For many migration projects, JBS charges a flat fee rather than billing by the time taken to complete the project. By the nature of this model, faster migrations with MSPComplete mean more profitable migrations. The step-by-step guidance in the platform helps reduce delays because engineers will no longer need to look elsewhere to complete the next step in the process.

What’s next?

We asked, what will your engineers do with the time they get back from a more streamlined delivery? Maybe take a vacation? Chiemi and Risa agreed without hesitation: They’ll move on to the next project! It not only means more profits, but allows them to help more customers quickly, which aligns with the “Customer First” philosophy that’s driven business at JBS for decades, with more to come.

Maximize your profits as a CSP Partner

Watch our recorded webinar with Melissa Mulholland, Cloud Profitability Lead at Microsoft, to learn about exciting opportunities as a Microsoft CSP Partner. Get a peek at the CSP roadmap, hear how attaching managed services to Azure and Office 365 opportunities is easier than ever, and learn how MSPComplete can help you reduce delivery costs for every project.

Watch it here today!