Goliath Technologies, a leader in end user experience monitoring and troubleshooting software, announced today that it was selected by Empire Office to anticipate, monitor, and document Empire’s end user experience across their Citrix environment. When COVID-19 made its way to the United States and remote work was mandated, Empire Office sought out a monitoring solution that would provide insights into the effectiveness and accessibility of their current toolset for their new remote team to ensure they could maintain their high level of productivity while working from home.
Empire Office, the largest commercial furniture dealer in the world with headquarters in Manhattan, N.Y., is a family-owned business with many employees having decades of tenure. “Looking for a monitoring solution wasn’t about trusting employees, but instead really understanding if anyone was struggling to work in their new office environment under these challenging conditions,” shared Michael Pfaeffle, Senior Vice President and CIO, Empire Office.
Adjusting to a New Work Style
Empire Office needed a monitoring solution that would give accurate metrics to understand if their team was in fact working during their open Citrix sessions and for how long each day. Management wanted to analyze trends in user behavior while working from home – showing whether users were changing their hours of work due to new circumstances, such as supporting the demands of homeschooling. It was important for HR to understand who might be struggling and ensure they had the right support and tools in place to be successful.
After researching several solutions that did not fit Empire Office’s requirements, they discovered Goliath’s End User Productivity Report which highlighted the percentage of time someone was inactive as well as the maximum amount of inactivity time in any given Citrix session. “Most of the time we see this being 45-60 minutes, most likely someone’s lunch break. On occasion, we do see where the same person is inactive for 3-4 hours on a regular basis. Now we know there is a problem and have the data to drive a meaningful conversation with our employee,” said Pfaeffle.
With Goliath, Empire Office now has complete visibility into the productivity of their team while working remotely. “The data has driven great conversations around our culture and work styles. We know we have great people, and now we have the data to understand who might need our help. We have the insights and visibility we never had before,” shared Pfaeffle. In many cases, Empire Office found productivity to be even higher than before, with many employees logging in earlier than before or working into the late hours of the night. “With metrics from Goliath, we learned there is no normal set of work hours when everyone is working from home. Some employees start their day later and work late in the evening. Others start even earlier, wrapping their day sooner. Some just frankly work more hours.”
Troubleshooting the End User Experience at their Home Offices
In addition to reporting on the overall end user experience, Goliath provides Empire Office deep and broad metrics to help troubleshoot performance issues for their remote workers. With a limited team, the Citrix software with real-time data Goliath offers enables Empire Office to quickly isolate root cause of performance issues and determine if an issue is global, related to the Citrix infrastructure, or if it is isolated to a single user.
“Goliath has been helping organizations for years capture better insights into the end user experience of remote workers through advanced reporting and analytics,” said Thomas Charlton, CEO and Chairman of Goliath Technologies. “Empire Office, faced with the challenges of COVID-19 and the sudden surge in remote workers, asked us to enhance our reporting to include productivity analysis of those working from home. Together we solved this problem in a collapsed timeframe.”
Click here to read the full success story and learn how Empire Office is gaining critical insights into their remote worker trends using Goliath’s End User Productivity Report.
About Empire Office
New York-headquartered Empire Office is the largest commercial furniture dealer in the world, with over 74 years of experience and employees across the country. Counting among its clients the world’s premier corporations, including 30 of the top 100 Fortune 500 companies, Empire provides its customers with national coverage and unparalleled service across all 50 states. Empire Office is recognized as a Steelcase Premier Partner and supports a list of more than 400 manufacturers. We partner with best-in-class architects, designers, brokers, craftsmen and manufacturers to deliver proven workspace solutions. With creative and cost-effective results, we address business challenges and activate brands. For additional information, please visit our website at: www.empireoffice.com.
About Goliath Technologies
Goliath Technologies offers end user experience monitoring and troubleshooting software, with embedded intelligence and automation, that enables IT pros to anticipate, troubleshoot, and document performance issues regardless of where workloads, applications, or users are located. By doing so, Goliath helps IT break out of reactive mode, and into proactive mode. Customers include Universal Health Services, NorthBay Healthcare, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Penn National Insurance, American Airlines, Office Depot, Tech Mahindra, Pacific Life, Xerox, HCL, and others. Learn more about how we empower proactive IT at goliathtechnologies.com.