Counting over 400 child daycare centres and providing care for more than 30,000 children every day, Partou is a Dutch industry leader with a duty as beautiful as it is essential.
We sat down with Erwin Wilschut, ICT-projectmanager at Partou: "Children's data are an inherent part of any child daycare operation. From the moment a parent calls to inquire about availability, sensitive data is often sent by email as part of that exchange. And of course there's also our communication with other parties to consider, such as public health services or regulators.
Thankfully I brought a great deal of knowledge and experience to the table when, in August of 2019, I started my job at Partou: I'd previously done research into security practices at non profit organisations, which proved very helpful.
Prior to working at Partou I worked in a tightly organised business environment of well defined processes. Of course, Partou's main focus is to provide good care for children. Using my knowledge and aforementioned research perspectives, I managed to put the issue of online security on our management's agenda.
Although the need for security was evident to everyone, Partou at the time was in the midst of a merger, which is why it took me a bit of effort to make sure the issue of data security was dealt with instantly, rather than in the wake of said merger.
Preventing not just the financial setback but also the reputational damages associated with data breaches thus became my mission, as I set out to look for the solution.
We ended up inviting 3 candidates for a demo. One was quickly dismissed, so we were left to choose between Smartlockr and your competitor. The two products in and of itself seemed similar enough, but Smartlockr's communication style was what made it stand out above the rest.
All of our questions were answered quickly and the odd time an answer wasn't readily available, we'd get a timeline of when to expect one. I really appreciated the way Smartlockr proactively reached out to us with tips or simply to make sure we had thought of everything. In short, Smartlockr positioned itself as a partner rather than a supplier."
The moment a contract is signed, a customer can rely on their Customer Success Team:
"We immediately got assigned a Customer Success Manager, essentially a liaison between Smartlockr and the customer, someone who's there every step of the way. This proved of great value to me. Whenever you sign on with another company, you yourself don't know how to implement its product, or how to make sure your co-workers will welcome it as much as you do. No one likes change after all, which made it all the more valuable when our Customer Success Manager handed me fully fledged communication and implementation plans, or anything else that was needed. Smartlockr obviously has a lot of experience with onboarding.
They really go the extra mile here. Typical of Smartlockr for instance is that their Sales department regularly checks base with us, long after the contract was signed. That's not something you see often.
Currently we're rolling out Smartlockr in small batches in our organisation. We believe in giving end users the responsibility to email securely: trust is gained by giving it. Smartlockr is of big help in this respect, by making it very easy for people to click that extra button needed for securing email communication. The fact it's such a small change helps to prevent any resistance to change.
Those who can use Smartlockr have unanimously spoken out positively about Smartlockr and how easy it is to use.
Overall I'd award Smartlockr a 9.5 out of 10 and I would definitely recommend it to other organisations.