Here's a question we typically get asked when an organisation is evaluating whether to partner with EquiTech:
What sets the EquiTech Service Team Apart?
In a market that is filled with reputable IT partners all with great pedigree, it's a brilliant question. There are of course many things that we do, but one area we set ourselves apart from the rest is the approach we take with our service team of what we call applied learning as apposed to just theory.
We'll hand the metaphorical microphone to one of our newest recruits shortly, but just to explain the concept briefly. EquiTech Group develop and coach every member of the service department to have acumen of the technical elite rather than the ordinary. Where most of our competitors will set the staff learning paths of just theory and certifications at best we go one step further, where we give our engineers the time, resources and autonomy to apply their learning.
We asked our most recent recruits to our technical service team, Carl Chambers, about his experience with us and what applied learning meant for him.
An Internal Perspective of Applied Learning
"I recently began my journey into the IT world with EquiTech Group. After over 10 years of working in the automotive industry, a chance came around for me to delve into what was just for me, a hobby. I enjoyed tinkering around building custom PC’s and became quite good at it. Any software issues that presented themselves, were soon overcome through frantic googling and more often that not, the very bottom posts in forum threads.
EquiTech took me on as helpdesk engineer, knowing that I had the soft skills and the ability to learn things fast. One of the things I wanted to do from the get-go, was enrol in a Microsoft certification and challenge myself to pass within the first month of employment. This I knew would be a tough challenge but would set the stall out for how I wanted to go about upskilling myself and show intent.
It was decided that the best course for me to begin with was The Microsoft 365 Fundamentals. This course would take me down a path of understanding cloud concepts, Microsoft 365 apps, security, privacy, trust, pricing, licensing, and support to name a few. Upon seeing exactly what was involved in the exam, just how broad spread it was, at first, was initially a daunting prospect. Four weeks? Have I set the bar too high I wondered.
I began learning for the first week with a training course, a fantastic, well-presented course on the Microsoft 365 fundamentals exam. It broke down into sections exactly what would be in the exam and what I would be expected to understand. This helped a huge amount as I could go away and break down each section piece by piece."
An Internal Perspective of Applied Learning
"The first section I tackled was understanding cloud computing. I spun up some virtual machines and began to play around with Azure and Microsoft 365. Quickly, I started to understand just how powerful cloud computing can be when it is deployed correctly. The fact that I could in essence spin up a whole virtual network in minutes to what I imagine before, would have been whole server rooms and offices full of desktops. I had this is my hands, up and running within a few clicks. It was amazing. I then began to toy around
'okay, so what can I do with this I thought? I know, I’ll create my own virtual company, sales, marketing, HR, IT and customer services.'
I knew from the training course that I could create groups for these departments, it was also briefly touched on that you could do some clever stuff with groups. Automatically assign 365 licenses, set teams, SharePoint sites, mailboxes and much more if you were clever with how you set the users up and what parameters you set up within the groups.
A great example of this was when I set the IT department up so that if any user had IT within their department in the 365 properties, it would then be
Assigned a 365 license
Put into the technical mailbox
Added to IT SharePoint site
Given IT helpdesk admin privileges within the 365 tenant
This got me thinking of just how scalable 365 can be if set up correctly from the off. Any employee I would add to the tenant from now on, within the IT department, 365 would just take care of the rest.
I then learnt about the features of 365 and how a business could unlock its true capabilities and power with all the Microsoft apps. You need a place where your teams can collaborate and track a project? planner, you need a place where you can take bookings that seamlessly integrates live with your employee’s diaries? Microsoft booking. A place for your teams to share ideas? SharePoint. The list is endless. Everyone knows word, excel and PowerPoint, how they’ve changed people’s workdays for the better, believe me, there is so much more to 365 than I’ve ever seen utilised in previous roles. Just by having a little understanding of these apps, the power of them, will hugely increase productivity and collaboration within a business."
So, What sets the EquiTech Service Team Apart?
Those were Carls thoughts, so we'll revert back to the question originally posed. what sets us apart is that we develop the technical elite, because whilst certifications are a necessity, having technical engineers that can apply that knowledge is what we and our customers care for. It means that not only do they have the acumen, but they can diagnose, test and resolve a customers issue in a fragment of the time of an engineer who only knows the theory.
Call to Action
If you want to upgrade to the technical elite, speak to one one of our consultants at EquiTech Group:
Phone - 01604 346 444
Email - info@etg365.co.uk
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