Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce & Industry
Company Overview
The Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s mission is to provide leadership and support for the economic advancement of the community, while serving as a catalyst for the development of programs and services that benefit its members. The Chamber has been building the foundation for a strong business community since 1946. It’s membership driven with approximately 500 businesses and individuals consisting of medical, manufacturing, professional service firms, and retail.
The Problem
The Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MACCI) needed to make a decision regarding its aging in-house server. The staff did an analysis to determine if it should update the server or move to the cloud. Their research revealed that moving to the cloud would provide more features, benefits and services than remaining with an in-house server, and it would remove the responsibility of maintaining the server.
“With an in-house server, we’re still responsible for maintaining the equipment,” said Scott Larson, Executive Director of the MACCI. “Since we don’t have an in-house IT specialist here, it made more sense to let someone with that expertise and that top-level equipment provide us with that service.”
When the MACCI sent out an RFP for the project, Larson said Marco’s thoroughness of the process rose to the top.
“Marco was very thorough in their process for bringing a customer onboard to the cloud. They had all of the steps we needed to go through laid out. In our weekly meetings, we went through the checklist to ensure we knew who was doing what. And if we had a question about any step in the process, they were very helpful in giving us feedback on the preferred method for doing things.”
Larson said when all of the steps had been completed, the actual switch to transfer all of the chamber’s data and applications to Marco’s cloud servers was smooth, uneventful and took less than a day. To help the MACCI get acquainted with the new system, Marco provided one-on one training with each staff member.
Now that the MACCI has made the switch to the cloud, Larson said they’re taking advantage of a number of benefits. First and foremost is having server redundancy.
“Before if something went wrong with our server, we were down. Now if something goes wrong with our cloud server, Marco automatically switches us over to a different one. Loss of service is almost non-existent."
Another benefit is not having to update software and hardware. With Marco’s Cloud Services, the chamber receives automatic updates on all of the software. And Larson knows that the system is equipped with the latest security features.
Of course, because it’s the cloud, the chamber staff is able to access the system from any location. That provides a convenience they didn’t have before.
Perhaps, more than anything, Marco’s Cloud Services provide Larson with peace of mind.
“We don’t have to worry about any one of us being the ‘ipso facto tech guru’ here—trying to make sure we’re maintaining the hardware and keeping the system up and running. That’s someone else’s responsibility now. If there’s a problem, we let Marco know and they’re able to jump on it and get it taken care of. For us, it’s plug and play. It’s always there when we need it”
Since moving to the cloud, the MACCI has experienced very few issues. But, when they do, Larson said Marco’s service has been thorough and responsive—as it has from the beginning.
“Marco was very good to work with through the design and implementation stages; very organized and responsive to us. Since we’ve been up and running, they’re always really quick to respond to us. We’ve been very satisfied with the whole process. We’ve all been through various software and hardware conversions and there are always issues that happen with those. This had been one of the smoothest transitions we’ve ever had.”
