Fig & Olive – A BetterCloud Case Study

Since they first installed FlashPanel this summer, Fig & Olive has been one of our most involved customers – providing product feedback, participating in UX calls and helping out whenever we needed a customer’s opinion. We’re extremely proud to be working with Fig & Olive and the restaurant’s IT Director, Matthew Joseph. For more on how this acclaimed restaurant makes use of FlashPanel everyday, check out the case study.

A BetterCloud case study

Employees: 500 (68 on Google Apps)
Founded: 2005
Industry: Food and Beverage
Website: www.figandolive.com
FlashPanel Customer Number: 3,787

Born out of an immense passion for fine olive oils, Fig & Olive was founded in New York in 2005 by native Frenchman Laurent Halasz. The restaurant has grown in recent years to serve four locations across the New York area, with two recent additions in California. Dishing up cuisine from the Riviera and coastal regions of Southern France, Italy and Spain, Fig & Olive has received critical acclaim for its fresh and seasonal fare.

Serving Up Google Apps

As Fig & Olive expanded on both coasts, the management team looked to replace their inadequate Network Solutions email system. After weighing their options, between Hosted Exchange and Google Apps, the restaurant’s IT Director, Matthew Joseph, himself a former chef, easily landed on Google. Joseph and the rest of the management team of 68 felt that Google Apps was a better match, mainly citing affordability and archiving ability – according to Joseph, “Microsoft’s offering wasn’t nearly as robust as Google’s Postini.”

After migrating to Google this past June, Mr. Joseph had quickly installed Domain Management Studio (DMS) to handle day to day domain management needs. However, after about a month using DMS, Joseph encountered a number of bugs and limitations. In search of a better solution, Fig & Olive’s Google Apps provider, Cumulus Global, quicky recommended FlashPanel.

Covering Domain Management Needs for Every Situation

Since installing FlashPanel, Matthew says he’s gained an ease of administration, far surpassing DMS and Google’s Control Panel, but one feature in particular proved FlashPanel to be truly invaluable.

FlashPanel came to the rescue during Hurricane Sandy, which forced Fig & Olive to close its West 13th Street headquarters for a week when lower Manhattan went dark. Matthew was able to set auto replies for each member of his management team remotely. In such a chaotic time, the ability to set auto responders and ensure inbound emails received some sort of answer were priceless. Matthew said in terms of managing his domain during the storm he “couldn’t have asked for anything more.”

When Mr. Joseph isn’t using FlashPanel to solve administrative emergencies, he makes use of FlashPanel’s Group Management tools, which allow him to easily create groups and add or remove users from various groups within the domain.

As Fig and Olive Grows So will their Use of FlashPanel

As Fig & Olive employees use more and more of the Google Apps suite, Mr. Joseph is looking forward to digging into some of FlashPanel’s asset visibility features, like Docs sharing trends and in-depth reporting, noting that as an “IT team of one,” these quick overviews comes in very handy. The Fig & Olive team currently uses Google Drive primarily for storage, so as more files are uploaded, Mr. Joseph will have to keep a close eye on Drive quota usages. Using FlashPanel’s reporting tools, Joseph can quickly view who’s nearing storage limits and either ask that user to delete certain files or purchase more Drive space for that account.

Aside from FlashPanel’s ease of use, Mr. Joseph appreciates the tool’s ever expanding host of functionality and in one word, simply calls FlashPanel “necessary.”