With deeploi, this startup cut all IT tasks down to just 30 mins a week

 Overview

• Off is a startup offering campervan rentals across Germany, aiming to make caravaning accessible to everyone

• They struggled with managing IT tasks manually, leading to time-consuming processes, lack of control over devices, and a high workload for HR

• With deeploi, Off reduced weekly IT tasks to just 30 minutes, streamlined onboarding, and gained access to dedicated IT support

The Off-ice before deeploi

A classic startup case: Off does have "IT people", but their focus is on building the company website, not handling the hordes of cases that fall under IT administration. Those instead came to Laura Hertwig, HR business partner at Off.

“Our IT setup was very simple because I did it myself,” laughs Laura. “We just bought laptops on Amazon and I set everything up.” This is fine to begin with, but quickly becomes “a little chaotic,” as Laura puts it. “We just gave out the laptops and didn’t really have an overview on who has what,” which also spelled trouble in the expenses department.

As the business started to grow, this manual process was clearly unsustainable. “The IT stuff is very time consuming. You think you can do it real quick, but you can’t. It’s always a lie you tell yourself.” Setting up each laptop took her “an hour or two,” plus another hour just to set up accounts and permissions.

Juggling those responsibilities alongside other tasks is near impossible. As Laura puts it, “people cannot work when their laptops don’t work. So it was always a high priority. And even though you have other priorities, you can’t meet them, because you want your colleagues to be able to work.”  

Not only was it exhausting, but “we didn’t have any security or anything else,” she says – a recipe for disaster further down the road.  

Turning Off’s IT back on

The need for a solution that could handle all these tasks was clear. And so, Off became one of deeploi’s first ever customers.

Nowadays, all Laura’s weekly IT tasks can be condensed down into 30 minutes. As for onboarding, HR doesn’t have to do anything technical – the only to-do is checking everything works correctly. When you consider that Off has onboarded over 170 people within 16 months, that equals a whopping 340 onboarding hours saved. In May this year alone, they had 16 new joiners – an amount that just can’t be handled manually.

The maintenance of their IT has also become very simple: “we can say, ‘oh, we need this app,’ so we just roll it out for everyone. That is really nice.” Not forgetting one of Laura’s favourite features: deeploi IT support. “I’m the biggest fan,” she says. “Knowing there are people there, they’re very quick to answer, and they’ll just do it. I was very relaxed because I know I can just trust the deeploi support team.” This saves Laura a big chunk of time, especially when it comes to walking non-technical colleagues through simple IT issues.

Off to the future

Working in the campervan rental sphere, business at Off is – and will always be – seasonal. Certain months have a very high volume of onboardings; plus, they employ seasonal workers. This means things can get a little more confusing than they do at most companies. Thankfully, deeploi will continue to help them keep control of the chaos going forwards.

About Off

A campervan: the ultimate sign of freedom. With four wheels and a little place to sleep, nothing stands in the way of adventure (apart from maybe the sea). The world is your oyster.  

It’s something many dream of doing, but with the average campervan coming in at tens of thousands of euros, it’s not an option for most. That is, until Off came along. They aim to make caravaning accessible to everyone by offering a range of campervans for rent across Germany, from the cute and compact to all-singing, all-dancing houses on wheels.

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