Known for its affordable, high-quality designer furniture, Maisons du Mondes offers decorations, art and furniture always in line with the latest trends. The company has received several awards for its commitment and is one of the companies most involved in sustainable development. Its principles of respect for nature (sustainable management of resources, traceability of wood, control of chemical substances, reduction of CO² emissions, etc.) and its numerous social, charitable and health-related initiatives make it a model company. It relies on suppliers who are directly involved in the design of the product and who comply with chemical, traceability and conduct requirements, which makes it possible to combine style, accessibility and quality, while respecting the environment.

As Fabrice ABIDA (Lead WorkstationOps of Maisons du Monde) explains, Maisons du Monde was faced with a problem in interacting between its facilities management tool and off-site computers, with shops and offices spread across different cities and countries. “Our previous outsourcing software was installed on one of our servers, the off-site computers could only access it via a VPN access. For example, to run a script, the host had to be connected to the VPN, which had an impact on the practicality and time taken to process the request/incident.”

“Deployment of new software was unreliable because employees were off the network for long periods of time. Additionally, remote support required users to be in a secure location to connect to the VPN and then stay connected while we resolved their incident.” Also, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the process of modernising all IT management tools accelerated considerably for Maisons du Monde. Everyone was forced to work from home. “While we were providing support to employees who were still in the field, we suddenly had to support our remote employees as well. The tools we had at our disposal did not allow us to do this in a responsive and efficient way,” says Fabrice.

To overcome these problems, Fabrice started looking for cloud-based solutions. After evaluating different tools, Fabrice came across NinjaOne and was surprised that one tool could replace many of their solutions used individually for endpoint management.

“We were able to replace our software deployment, IT inventory, endpoint configuration and remote control solutions with NinjaOne, significantly reducing the complexity of our IT management technology stack and saving on licensing costs,” says Fabrice.

“NinjaOne, which provides me with remote access with a cloud-based managed model, gives me much more flexibility and security in my work.”

The immediate result of adopting NinjaOne was that Maisons du Monde was able to move its employees to a home-based working situation with minimal impact on productivity and end-user satisfaction, says Fabrice. By moving their entire IT management stack to the cloud, Fabrice and his team are able to remotely monitor and manage the devices used by employees in a secure environment, whether they are on or off site.

“With NinjaOne, if an incident occurs, we can be proactive about it. NinjaOne is dynamic and improves the maintenance of our devices and the satisfaction of my colleagues who no longer lose precious time on resolving requests/incidents.

One very important aspect that Fabrice really likes about NinjaOne is the ability to automate many more things than his previous solution. “Thanks to Ninja’s powerful scripting engine, I have the possibility to automate various tasks using custom scripts available in several languages (Powershell, Batch, Javascript, ShellScript and VBScript) on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. The customisable settings give me the ability to create scripts once and schedule their execution according to my needs. Every action taken on NinjaOne is tracked and recorded to provide a reliable history for compliance purposes.”

“Ninja allows us to achieve secure, layered management of our IT environment based on the permissions and access levels assigned to users.”

One fun fact that Fabrice mentioned about Ninja is the incredible intuitiveness and ease of use of the interface, which at first he felt he couldn’t do much with, given its surprising simplicity. “It’s only once you start playing with NinjaOne’s platform that you realise the huge amount of tasks you can do. Despite its seemingly simple appearance, it actually makes things much easier once you dig deeper.”

Ultimately, Fabrice and his team are extremely fond of NinjaOne’s service desk, which is always on hand to interact and resolve issues, answer any questions and help make the end-user experience as smooth as possible.

While the success of a company such as Maisons du Monde lies in the quality of the furniture it offers, over and above its adaptation to the Covid-19 pandemic, partnering with NinjaOne has been extremely important for Fabrice and his team to improve the management of the IT infrastructure, and has had a positive impact on the business and employee productivity.