BARK Saved Thousands of Hours of IT Work with BetterCloud

BARK is the world’s most dog-centric company, devoted to making dogs happy with the best products, services and content. BARK’s dog-obsessed team applies its unique, data-driven understanding of what makes each dog special to design playstyle-specific toys, wildly satisfying treats, personalized meal plans and supplements, and dog-first experiences that foster the health and happiness of dogs everywhere.

Challenge: 

When Elliot Grossman started at BARK as the Director of IT, he was the only member of the IT team. Being the sole person responsible for all IT tasks, like onboarding, offboarding, and mid-lifecycle changes, was very time consuming. Grossman was buried in work and was unable to focus on the end goal: elevate the role of IT. 

As his team grew, they were still burnt out from the volume of repetitive, manual tasks. Grossman stressed the importance of keeping his team members fulfilled and ultimately retaining their talent. “I need to keep the person to the right and left of me happy. I can’t have them burn out over and over,” he said. “I want to make sure my team is happy to come to work and happy to solve people’s problems.”

Grossman has used BetterCloud for several years across different organizations. Bringing BetterCloud to BARK was a no brainer. In order to gain executive buy-in, Grossman calculated how long it took to onboard or offboard an employee manually at the precise moment it needed to be done. In order to complete all these tasks, he would need to hire and train another full time employee. 

“If you’re going to hire more people, it’s going to be a strain on your budget. BetterCloud can make life easy for everybody,” Grossman explained. “The C-suite is happy because they’re saving money. The compliance team is happy because we’re deprovisioning users appropriately. My team is happy because now we can work on projects and broaden our knowledge in other areas.”

By using BetterCloud, the IT team could save time and money, while keeping various departments content.

Solution:

Implementation & Time to Value

To get started, Grossman began to collect data and outline steps in user lifecycle management (ULM) processes by mapping out the actions that were needed to onboard an employee, including application access and role permissions, and offboard an employee. He presented this information to BARK’s BetterCloud implementation specialist and went about building the perfect workflows. What made it even easier was that no coding experience was required due to the intuitive GUI (graphical user interface). “I’m almost positive that my mom, who can’t even turn a computer on, could write her own workflow,” Grossman joked. 

Implementation took about two weeks. “You really get that one-on-one experience from start to finish,” said Grossman. However, it didn’t stop there. He explained that once BetterCloud was up and running, the implementation specialist followed up to ensure workflows were working efficiently and effectively. 

In addition to building ULM workflows, Grossman worked with the implementation team on what insights were needed from a security standpoint and what processes could be automated to reduce risk. Specifically, he had no visibility into forwarded emails to personal mailboxes or competitors. The implementation team walked him through how to build automations for security controls. 

User Lifecycle Management

Having the ability to execute ULM processes through BetterCloud’s workflows gives the IT team flexibility and peace of mind that each step is completed in a timely manner. 

Grossman’s team has a monthly meeting with the whole technology department, where he shares BetterCloud stats and metrics. “To talk about what BetterCloud is doing and how it’s affecting my team is a great thing. The key is teamwork and automation,” he said.

The IT team has 40 active workflows built to automate almost 450 steps of ULM processes, eliminating over 1,200 hours of work in one year. That time saved means availability for the IT team to work on higher value projects that improve the employee experience. 

Compliance & Shadow IT

Remaining compliant is very important to the IT team. 

Shadow IT is consistently a concern for IT. Grossman explained that it occurs when a department invests in an application and manages it themselves, without the approval or knowledge of IT. As a public company with compliance top of mind, the IT team needs to ensure these applications are offboarded as well. However, IT often doesn’t have admin rights to these apps. With BetterCloud’s offboarding workflow, IT is able to automate an email that will get sent to the app admin saying that an employee has been terminated, and requests confirmation that access has been revoked. “We have passed compliance every single time on applications we don’t even have our hands in,” said Grossman. 

Zero Touch Experience

Another use Grossman found for BetterCloud is granting access to documents or calendars. Whether an employee is terminated or is just away on vacation, oftentimes key documents are not shared. BetterCloud is able to add the appropriate person without the owner having to touch it. This also comes in handy when adding executive assistants to C-level mailboxes and calendars without having the employee do it and without having to reset any passwords. 

Up-level IT

As a leader, Grossman takes on great responsibility in looking out for his team and ensuring they are building skills to advance in their career.  With the time saved through automation, the IT team is able to gain knowledge in other areas of interest, participate in training, earn certifications, and become proficient through broader experiences. “I want my team to succeed. Denying the opportunity for professional development hurts career growth and makes employees less valuable in the long-term,” Grossman said. 

On a personal level, Grossman has also been able to shine in other areas. He takes pride in making sure automations are compliant to pass audits, save his team time, save the company money, remove the need to hire additional headcount, and retain the existing talent on his team of three by making sure they enjoy their work. 

“Right now BARK has over 800 employees. I’ve seen the company grow from 300 all the way up. Being able to keep the amazing people on my team around as we scale is key for me,” said Grossman.

Support

Any time the IT team needs help, BetterCloud’s world-class support staff is available. “BetterCloud’s support is another level of support. It’s that human contact from start to finish. It’s that level of feeling confident that when I reach out to support with a question, they’re able to help me solve it. It’s really amazing,” said Grossman.

Results: