Intermedia Successfully Completes Urgent Email Migration for ABC Stores

Background

Famous in the Hawaiian Islands and other locations across the Pacific, ABC Stores brings shopping convenience with a touch of the islands. With friendly store people, great service and a large selection of items, ABC makes it easy to get the essential items you need, including groceries, gifts, souvenirs and local apparel. In fact, no one sells more macadamia nuts, suncare products and souvenirs in Hawaii than ABC!

To manage a chain of stores that spans an ocean, great communication and logistics are critical. Whether it’s making sure shelves are stocked at stores in Guam or end displays are set up in Hawaii, employees at ABC depend on reliable email to maintain smooth operations.

In fact, it was smooth sailing at ABC Stores until their iNotes email service provider announced it was going out of business.

ABC Stores

Company Profile:
ABC Stores is a chain of 78 convenience stores based in Hawaii, with additional locations in Saipan, Guam and Las Vegas.

Industry: Retail

Headquarters: Honolulu, HI

Intermedia’s customer since: 2014

The Challenge

The IT department found themselves in an urgent situation where they had only one month to find a new email solution and migrate 400 email accounts. The prospect of failure would have been disastrous, according to Dave Awaya, CIO for ABC Stores. Employees would have had to default to telephone and fax or using a new email account without all of their prior messages and contacts.

The new email solution needed to be cloud-hosted. As the previous system was also hosted, the IT staff didn’t have the expertise in-house for managing email systems, and didn’t want to spend the time to develop it. Cost and flexibility were also considerations, as was having an easy-to-use, full-featured web interface. But most importantly, the solution provider needed to step up with a fast, thorough migration to save their users’ email accounts.

After investigating several cloud email providers, they found one that could meet their full requirements – Intermedia. However, the most challenging part would be the upfront migration. “Our provider at that time warned us that it was going to be kind of difficult to get off of iNotes onto Exchange,” said Louise Yim, IT Project Manager for ABC Stores. “We were very concerned that we wouldn’t have a smooth transition.”

The Solution

ABC Stores selected Intermedia Exchange Email with Advance Email Security and Email Archiving as their new email solution. Intermedia’s Worry-Free Experience™ includes onboarding and migration services, and ABC found Intermedia’s approach to be methodical and thorough. “They told us what they were going to do. We installed the software and they helped us to complete the migration. We worked with really great guys on the onboarding team…it was simpler than I expected,” said Yim.

Furthermore, Exchange Email delivered enterprise-grade, cloud-hosted email at a price comparable to their previous solution. It is flexible as well. For instance, some users were not used to the conversations feature for organizing email, so it was turned off for them. Others kept the feature because they liked how it groups associated emails.

We experienced no downtime during the changeover from one system to the other

LOUISE YIM, IT Project Manager, ABC Stores,
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Products They Use

The Results

With Intermedia’s expertise, ABC Stores migrated all 400 email accounts from iNotes to Exchange Email in less than three weeks. It came off without a hitch. “We experienced no downtime during the changeover from one system to the other,” said Yim. Users were able to switch with all of their email and contacts intact.

Beyond the migration, Intermedia provided solid support for day-to-day operations. “The help desk responsiveness is very quick,” said Awaya. Intermedia’s Knowledge Base is also very good and simple to follow, according to Yim. IT is now able to self-manage changes to user accounts and configurations. Previously they had to submit requests by email to the hosting provider, adding delay and complexity.

Another benefit has been high reliability. “The system is giving us more stability, as far as relative uptime,” he said.

Asked if he would recommend Intermedia to others, Awaya said, “I would recommend your company and your service. Overall, our experience has been very positive.”

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