About NorthEast Kind Holdings
NorthEast Kind Holdings, best known for its Sweet Dirt brand, is one of the largest legal marijuana producers in Maine. Since its founding, the company has focused on innovative and sustainable cannabis cultivation for both medical and recreational use. As a result, it became the first recreational cannabis cultivator in Maine to receive a sustainability certification. Northeast Kind Holdings currently operates several retail stores and a large farm where it produces most of its products.
Challenge
Northeast Kind's rapid growth exposed the technical limitations of their Zendesk ticketing system.These limitations directly impacted the company's operations and the efficiency of individual departments.
The main limitations included:
- Clunky user interface: The cumbersome UI led to Zendesk never being fully adopted by users, who often preferred to contact support directly via email or phone.
- Lack of audit trail: Due to the unintuitive interface, some requests were handled partially or entirely outside of tickets, making it impossible to track down important information later.
- Lack of automation and customization: Automating workflows or customizing the UI according to specific needs was technically very limited.
- Siloed service desk and ITAM processes: Assets were recorded using spreadsheets without integration with the service desk, which often led to delays in resolving incidents and was time-consuming for the IT team to keep the asset records up to date.
- Cost: The total cost of extending Zendesk with some of the essential features was too high.
When searching for a new ITSM tool, Northeast Kind Holdings placed great emphasis on:
- Easy configurability and customization: They wanted to customize the tool to the specific needs of all departments without complex adjustments or coding.
- Microsoft integration: Seamless integration with their existing Microsoft environment was an important factor.
- Simple user interface: Easy-to-use interface would encourage wider adoption and provide a great experience for their end users.
- Integrated asset management: Choosing an all-in-one ticketing solution with asset management and tracking capabilities was a priority.
Solution
When looking for an alternative, they came across ALVAO's IT service management solution in Microsoft Teams AppsStore, which perfectly matched their needs - both technically and in terms of the licensing model. After a 30-day trial, they found that ALVAO's features, and flexibility fully addressed their needs. ALVAO helps improve daily operations in the following areas:
- Workflow automation: ALVAO helped automate communication and ticket resolution across departments and branches. Creating custom workflows using a drag-and-drop method makes it easy to tailor each workflow to the needs of any department.
- Single point of contact: The service catalog offers easy access to various services, including HR, IT, Finances, etc. The service catalog includes an integrated knowledge base that offers guidance on how to solve common issues for each service. This drives self-service and frees up agents' time to deal with more complex issues.
- Full audit trails: ALVAO automatically captures all information related to each ticket, including user responses and approvals. This information is easily traceable with a complete audit trail available in just a few clicks.
- Customization & configuration: Easy customization of the UI such as service forms and self-service portal contributed to the quick and easy adoption of ALVAO at Northeast Kind Holdings while ensuring that ALVAO perfectly covers the requirements of all departments and teams.
- Efficient Asset Management: All IT assets and equipment are tracked in ALVAO Asset Management. In the event of a reported incident or issue, the assets complete history can be quickly retrieved. For individual assets, the life cycle phase can also be easily identified, allowing for better budget planning for the upcoming period.
- Cost-saving licensing: While most vendors offer only an agent-based licensing model, ALVAO provides even a per-user licensing model which allows each user to be an agent whether it’s IT, HR or Finance agenda. This significantly saves overall costs and contributes to widespread adoption throughout the organization.
Conclusion
The implementation of ALVAO at Northeast Kind Holdings had an immediate positive impact on the daily work. ALVAO has quickly become an integral part of the business and acts as a universal communication platform that streamlines tasks across all departments and branches.
“I wouldn't call it a ticket system I would call it easily customizable tool to help you communicate with all departments in the company.“ Kellan Lawing, IT Manager, Northeast Kind
The transition to ALVAO was seamless, and the operations team is pleased with the rapid and successful adoption by end-users due to its simple and user-friendly interface.
„Not much of a learning curve. The UI is amazing. They love it. For the end user to place a ticket in, super-simple. They get it immediately.“ Geoffrey Hursch, IT Specialist, Northeast Kind
With the results Northeast Kind Holdings has achieved with ALVAO, they are excited about what else is possible. They are currently exploring how to fully utilize all the features of ALVAO Asset Management for more efficient asset tracking, easy auditability, and software license management.
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