March 26, 2020

March 26, 2020 | Mathew Stava | CEO

Last week, I outlined our company response to the unique and challenging circumstances resulting from the COVID-19 global pandemic. Wherever you are located, our thoughts and best wishes for safety go out to you, your families, and your colleagues. Moving forward in the upcoming weeks and months, I will continue to communicate here and by email to our employees and customers with updates and information.

How We’re Moving Forward as a Business?

The simplest response to this question, which we are hearing from customers, analysts, and friends, is that we’re running “business as usual.” As a remote-support company, Spinnaker Support is uniquely positioned to respond to global customer issues without delay. There is no interruption to our services, lines of communication, or standardized processes.

We have initiated and continue to follow our Business Continuity Plan. The biggest impact internally is the work-at-home directive for all employees. This is designed to protect them and their families, a top priority for me and our executive management. But given over ½ of our employees already work from remote locations, this has had no impact on operations and customer support. As I said last week, our support and services teams are well-positioned for this new remote reality, with the right tools and a sustained, positive, customer-first attitude.

In fact, we continue to hire and onboard customer-facing engineers and architects as well as internal staff to support our 2020 global sales and marketing initiatives. We’re building out all of our practices, including our newly launched Salesforce managed services. And interest in the services we provide continues to run high as companies reevaluate their IT budgets and staffing needs.

Two Examples of What We’re Doing for Customers

As a way to demonstrate our current state, I reached out to our operations team to solicit examples of how we’ve helped our customers during this trying time. These do an excellent job of demonstrating the breadth of the standard services we provide. Here are two:

Upper Midwest US, Healthcare:

“One of our managed services JDE customers was hit by ransomware last week. It took out their entire system. Once their servers were running again, our team stepped in to help restore operations for their E1 system. Their internal IT team was overwhelmed and needed help with even basic tasks on the database and Windows server administration. Under immense pressure from the business, we worked with the client for four days to get their production system back up and running. We did it! We even moved a check printer to a new server and overcame the 32-bit vs. 64-bit print driver conflicts.”

Israel, Telecommunications:

Due to COVID-19, Partner Communications Ltd. has had to send around 70% of its employees to unpaid vacation for one month, per government mandates. Partner is one of the biggest telecommunications companies, operating a cellular network in Israel. The following quote came from one of Spinnaker Support’s engineers assigned to Partner:

“Because of this forced vacation, the employees that normally do the Period Close process are not there, and the employees that reassigned to the Period Close are not familiar with the process. Last Thursday, Yariv Halperin, the senior manager for Oracle EBS and Oracle Database, called me to help them with several accounting errors. I logged the ticket, worked with them through phone calls, and connected online to their instance to provide the resolutions, which included setup update solutions and data fixes. They implemented these, and we were able to help them close the AP Period within a few days of the original ask.”

We’re Here for You, So Please Reach Out

I’m so proud of our company’s response to this global crisis. More than ever, we’re dedicated to fast and comprehensive customer service, in whatever capacity our customers require. And for organizations newly interested in our company or services, we’re always open to conversations and sharing these kinds of examples, so please reach out. Stay safe, everyone.