Welcome to allwhere Know How, an interview series that spotlights our customers and how they use allwhere to save on time and cost. Today we’ll be talking with Joseph Mente, Senior Director of DevOps & IT Operations at DroneDeploy, a San Francisco-based startup that writes software for drones and uses allwhere to handle procurement, storage, and retrievals.

Keep reading to see what he shared!

Tell us about your role at DroneDeploy, and the services your company provides.

We’re a San Francisco-based startup that writes software for drones. In other words, we take care of all the backend processing to make drones useful for companies ranging from small tech startups to top names in construction, mining, and agriculture. Our top goal is to bring all of the innovation the tech world has seen in the past 50 years to the physical world.

I started at DroneDeploy eight years ago as employee number 19, first as a DevOps engineer, and then, about four years ago, I took over IT. I now lead a team of ten folks across functions like DevOps, security, and, of course, IT. 

What challenges were you facing that incentivized you to begin working with allwhere?

Like many companies, we closed our office during the pandemic. When we reopened it again, our utilization numbers weren’t as high as we’d expected them to be, and we realized that the world of work had changed. With that, we made the decision to take DroneDeploy fully remote — and with that came a whole host of new challenges. We had to create repeatable, automated processes across all IT management, answering questions like; how can we support new hires? How do we get new equipment out to employees as quickly as possible? How do we manage our inventory in terms of storage? How do we create an automated procurement process? Soon we realized that working with allwhere could solve all of those challenges, from procurement to shipping to storage. We now feel like we have the right model that allows our IT technicians to operate at a higher level.

Describe the process you were using for IT asset management before you used allwhere, and how that process is different now.

Using allwhere has significantly improved our entire asset management process. Previously, it took two hours to handle a single laptop shipment. Now, with the help of allwhere, we manage 20 laptops in that same amount of time, allowing our IT technicians to focus on higher-level tasks. allwhere’s retrieval process has also been a game-changer. Quite frankly, we often used to just assume that a departing employee’s laptop would be a sunk cost for us, as return rates were so low. But with allwhere handling retrievals completely, we’re able to save and store those laptops in our inventory, or recycle them if needed.

We’ve gone from spending two hours per laptop, which scaled terribly, to just two hours per week on just checking in on our partnership with allwhere. Simply put, it’s a better experience both for the employee and the employer.

How has allwhere helped you save on time and cost? Do you store, resell, and recycle devices using allwhere?

Our team is no longer doing everything manually, which has resulted in our entire process moving faster, to a higher standard, with lower error rates. We’re no longer doing everything manually, and in turn we’re providing a higher quality employee onboarding and offboarding experience. We’re essentially able to fully outsource almost all of our inventory management. That means that our IT team’s time is freed up for other tasks, ultimately saving us a ton of time and money.

What is your favorite allwhere feature? How has it added to your experience as a customer?

I would say our favorite feature is the combination of storage and procurement. allwhere provides us with on-hand secure storage that we don’t have to keep track of, with all of the appropriate certifications we need. Then, we have the option of purchasing laptops directly through allwhere, which we know will be shipped on time and often at a lower cost than through other providers. And, if we need the equipment back, we can trust that it will be retrieved and stored safely, closing the loop on the lifecycle.

One key part of our customer experience is our monthly check-ins with the allwhere team. They keep track of our inventory so we can avoid unnecessary stockpiling and maximize the value of all of our inventory. Previously, we handled e-cycling ourselves, which cost money and involved finding a new e-waste company each time (often due to scheduling constraints on pickups). Now, allwhere manages recycling and resales, providing a trusted partner for these tasks. All of these once-complicated tasks get simplified, turning what was once a complex process into something straightforward and efficient.

What pain points have you experienced with previous vendors, and how has allwhere been able to fill those gaps?

The biggest advantage of allwhere is that it's simple. When I open the allwhere platform, I can clearly see the status of each piece of equipment through each stage of the lifecycle. They’ve done a really, really good job of making a very complicated task not complicated anymore. Conceptually, equipment management seems easy: how hard could it be to ship out some laptops, right? But it gets really difficult once you get in the weeds. allwhere has completely fixed the process for us, from beginning to end.

You can learn more about how allwhere can help you procure, deploy, store and retrieve all your employee hardware by booking a demo with our team.