NETCONFIG helps SMB customer Rodel succeed with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft Defender for Business

Protecting a business built with passion

Rodel Financial Services grew out of the desire to ensure that home sellers can access proceeds from their sales during the period of up to 90 days it can take to receive funds. Rodel supplies them with short-term funding, or bridging finance. Its product line includes trust fund oversight for those who need continual medical care and security bonds for customers in the legal space. Security, data confidentiality, and connectedness with customers and other financial organizations are nonnegotiable for Rodel. “We absolutely require open communication channels with customers, financial institutions, medical providers, and other externals,” explains Andrew Church, Founder and Managing Director, Rodel Financial Services. 

In 2017, the company began to create a strategy for maximum resilience, including hybrid and remote work. The leadership team considered the direst possibilities that might threaten its on-premises environment, including failed backups, fires, floods, and even computer viruses. The company also wanted to be paperless. Jacques Morkel, Operations Director at Rodel Financial Services, decided to migrate to the cloud and outsource much of the company’s day-to-day IT to an MSP. It was an easy choice. “Given the nature of our relationships with our customers, it’s very important that our service providers understand and identify with our business culture,” says Morkel. “NETCONFIG fills that need, and unlike larger companies, it values its relationship with us—we’re more than a number.” 

Rodel turned to NETCONFIG for a Microsoft 365 Business Premium rollout that met all of its needs. “We created a highly secure virtual workspace in which everyone can work from home with Microsoft 365 Business Premium,” says Morkel. “We safeguard email with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and we protect endpoints with Microsoft Defender for Business.” The company also augments security with phishing simulations. “NETCONFIG helps us with phishing awareness,” he adds. “You won’t easily catch one of our staff with a phishing email.”

Turning to a trustworthy, progressive MSP

NETCONFIG knows that SMBs need to stay focused on their missions, but often find themselves struggling to manage a plethora of disjointed applications that eventually take more effort to manage than they return in benefits. Rodel was a classic example, says Iain Emerson, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director at NETCONFIG. “Rodel offers a unique product in the financial space, and it’s focused on security and compliance,” he says. “That’s why we recommended that it use Microsoft 365 Business Premium.” Microsoft 365 Business Premium unites productivity and comprehensive security. It includes the standard Microsoft Office productivity apps plus the collaboration platform Microsoft Teams, and Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint. It protects those productivity apps and data with end-to-end security and management with Microsoft Defender for Office 365. The solution defends email with anti-phishing protection and an array of features: Azure Information Protection to safeguard sensitive data, and Microsoft Intune for managing devices including mobile devices. It also enables highly secure remote access and protection against lost or stolen passwords with Azure Active Directory Premium. Now Microsoft Business Premium includes the new Microsoft Defender for Business for enterprise-grade ransomware and endpoint security.

With Microsoft 365 Lighthouse, MSPs like NETCONFIG have a scalable, faster way to manage across their entire Microsoft 365 Business Premium customer base. For NETCONFIG, taking a deep dive into that consolidated toolset paid off as a way to offer maximum value to an ever-growing customer base. “With Lighthouse, we have a baseline view across all of our tenants, fast-tracking simple admin tasks like password changes,” says Wayne Erradu, Technical Director at NETCONFIG. “That makes it possible to offer a level-one Helpdesk, meaning that we can resolve issues in 15 minutes, a capability that probably no one else on the continent can offer. That’s a pivotal moment for us—and for our customers.”

A Microsoft Partner Network member with multiple Gold-level competencies, NETCONFIG’s deep expertise with Microsoft 365 Business Premium sealed Rodel’s trust. The company had used Microsoft applications from the start and was delighted with the collaboration it was beginning to achieve with Teams. Above all, it sought the security of the cloud. “When Microsoft launched a datacenter in South Africa, the door to our cloud adoption opened,” says Morkel. “We could comply with South African data residency regulations and gain Azure security and efficiencies. Microsoft has the expertise we trust. It was a logical move.”

Putting people before technology

NETCONFIG’s focus on the human element continually underscores the relationship long past the initial sale. “Our differentiator is that we’re not a technology company—we’re a people company,” says Erradu. “We’re the translators between the people and the technology. That resonates with the Microsoft mission to empower every person on the planet to achieve more, because that’s our mission too.”

NETCONFIG considers the needs of its customers in the context of both the SMB’s desire for turnkey IT and society in general. “Millennials want to be able to work from anywhere, anytime, in any way, on any device,” adds Erradu. “Our customers’ needs parallel ours, so it’s easy for us to translate the benefits of Microsoft 365 Business Premium to them.” To that end, NETCONFIG has a certified Microsoft trainer on staff. “Years ago, we all talked exclusively about technology,” he muses. “But keeping a customer for life means building trust and rapport, and that in turn means prioritizing change management and training.”

Harnessing Microsoft technologies to empower SMB companies

For Emerson and Erradu, Microsoft 365 Business Premium makes sense for their customers for all the reasons that it makes sense for them. “The Microsoft 365 Business Premium stack is massive,” notes Emerson. “Our customers get complete peace of mind knowing that with one subscription they have enterprise-grade security and the simplicity and ease of management that comes with a united tool set. And we’re not just delivering a tech stack—we’re providing a business solution that they can use to unpack efficiencies, which is a game-changer.” 

Erradu underscores the point. “I would advise other Microsoft partners that Microsoft 365 Business Premium is the only thing you should be selling. It’s the technology that we used to support the growth of our own company because it has everything a small business needs. Are we putting all of our eggs in one basket with Microsoft 365 Business Premium? Yes! It’s a good basket to be in, and we’ve seen those benefits.” 

When COVID-19 precipitated global remote work, Rodel was prepared. “We were well ahead of our competitors when the crisis struck,” says Church. “We stayed fully productive with Teams. Now, we maintain reduced office space because we routinely work remotely.” The company uses SharePoint for permissions-based access that keeps files available yet secure, and it uses Intune to deploy devices. Setting up a new PC for a user used to take hours. With Intune, Rodel security policies and user settings are centrally managed and pushed down to any PC that the user logs into. This reduced setup time for new users and/or on replacement PCs drastically. “We’ve gained hours of productivity because we can set up everything an individual user needs—even the desktop from their previous device—in minutes with Intune,” says Morkel.  

For Emerson, the advantages enjoyed by companies like his are just the first tier of more universal benefits, because SMBs are key to South African economic growth. “It’s rewarding for us to hear our customers’ appreciation for the business transformations they’ve achieved by unpacking the value of Microsoft technologies,” he says, “And it's a way forward for South Africa’s economy.”