Great Eastern Resort Works Across Diverse Portfolio of Technologies with a Supercharged ITSM Platform

“If something happens and we don’t have an immediate answer, it could potentially cost the company money,” says Ronald Johnson, a help desk technician for Great Eastern Resort Corporation. For this reason, the team was keen to find a solution that offered fast and easy access for both the techs and end-users, they wanted to automate manual tasks and improve reporting. With a focus on customer and service excellence, the team set out on a search for the right technology to overcome these challenges. 

“The platform’s no-code design allows IT staff to customize the software easily”

Supporting the Full Hospitality Tech Stack

Great Eastern Resort manages multiple properties in Virginia. Each of the resort’s services uses its own type of software. The restaurants use a point-of-sale system designed specifically for food service, for instance—while the hotels use a separate system for checking in guests including Massanutten Resort in the mountains of Virginia. This all-season resort features vacation accommodations, an indoor and outdoor water park, golf courses, a spa, several dining establishments and a variety of seasonal activities such as skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, hiking and mountain biking.  Each of these core offerings sits on its own tech stack – each requiring support.  All of this adds up to a busy IT team in need of the right IT Service Management software.

“Pretty much each entity we support has its own software that best meets the needs of its environment,” Johnson says.

The technicians responsible for supporting IT therefore must be knowledgeable about many different software systems including point-of-sale systems and all the technology needed to run service in restaurants for example, and they have a lot of ground to cover. Time is of the essence if they want to do their jobs effectively.

The company’s old ticketing system was a time drain. Because it was hosted internally, technicians in the field didn’t have easy visibility into open tickets—and updating the old system took a great deal of effort. The system also required lots of manual updating, there was no automation and lackluster reporting.

“We had to get someone from our data team to build out reports for us, and that was a hassle and took time,” says IT Infrastructure and Support Manager Brandon McNeely.

Reclaiming Lost Time with Modernized ITSM

Moving to TeamDynamix for IT Service Management has allowed tech staff at Great Eastern Resort to reclaim all that lost time and eliminate frustration. “The difference is like night and day,” Johnson says.

In searching for a new ticketing system, McNeely involved his entire IT support team in the decision. They wanted an all-inclusive, web-based IT Service Management platform that could also handle asset and Project Portfolio Management.

“One of the things we look for in any new product is, if we implement it, how many resources do we get to free up?” McNeely explains. Implementing TeamDynamix has allowed Great Eastern Resort to retire at least three different systems, he notes: its old ticketing system and a database server, as well as the company’s old asset management system.

After reviewing multiple products, the team chose TeamDynamix because they liked how easy it was to use. “The platform’s no-code design allows IT staff to customize the software easily” explains McNeely. “Without having to spend valuable time and resources on coding, we can easily configure the system to meet our unique needs. The interface is also highly intuitive for employees to use.

“I’ve had a lot of feedback from our client base saying they love the simplicity of TeamDynamix,” Johnson says. “It’s so much easier to submit a ticket to us. That makes everything flow a lot better, and it allows us to help our end-users quicker.”

TeamDynamix allows IT staff at Great Eastern Resort to work more efficiently. For instance, McNeely’s team has developed automated workflows for onboarding new hires and routing tickets instantly to the appropriate technician, leading to faster response times. “We’ve probably only scratched the surface in terms of what TeamDynamix can do from an automation standpoint,” he says.

Because his team couldn’t do a lot of data tracking with its old ticketing system, McNeely says it’s hard to quantify how much time his IT technicians are saving using TeamDynamix—but he says it’s significant. “It’s so much easier to create a ticket in TeamDynamix than in our previous system,” he observes.

“It’s so much easier to submit a ticket to us. That makes everything flow a lot better, and it allows us to help our end-users quicker.”

Becoming More Strategic

The time that IT staff saves allows them to resolve issues faster, which helps employees provide exceptional customer service to guests at the company’s resorts. It also empowers IT staff to do more strategic work, such as completing projects that can further enhance the properties’ IT infrastructure.

“We’ve been able to let our technicians take on more actual project work,” McNeely says.

With the old ticketing system, it would take help desk staff so long to create a ticket that they would often skip this step because they were more concerned with helping the next user. “Now, because of the speed with which they can do it, they’re creating tickets for every single call,” McNeely says. “So, we get much better tracking and more accurate data that can be used to improve our IT service.”

Getting a View into the Team Metrics

The simple yet robust reporting capabilities within TeamDynamix allow McNeely and his team to track key performance indicators (KPIs) more easily. Instead of asking the data team to create reports, they can generate reports for themselves in seconds—complete with easy-to-digest graphics. They now have much better visibility into the IT team’s workload, as well as where the most common issues lie.

This enhanced visibility has been key, “It helps us determine where to focus our time and resources,” McNeely says. “For example, we can see which applications generate the most support tickets, so we know where to focus our training more effectively.”

The ability to generate reports with powerful, easy-to-understand graphics also helps McNeely and his team advocate for additional resources where necessary.

“We recently got approval to hire a field installer,“ he says, “because I was able to show our upper management the percentage of tickets our team gets where they have to run out and hook something up. When we were asked for metrics before implementing TeamDynamix, we didn’t have that information.”

Moving forward, McNeely’s team hopes to use the data they get from TeamDynamix to identify and solve the root cause of problems they spend an inordinate amount of time fixing. “Being able to track those trends is extremely valuable,” Johnson observes.

“The impact that TeamDynamix is having on Great Eastern Resort is tremendous,” adds McNeely, “and it’s creating more value for the organization.” IT staff are saving time and working more strategically, and they’re able to support the needs of employees more effectively. This, in turn, allows employees to provide better service to guests at the company’s resorts.

“We’re really happy with what we’ve gotten out of TeamDynamix,” McNeely says, “and we’re looking forward to doing even more with the platform going forward.”