In this episode, Stephanie Donahue from PAIT Group joined me to talk about how her clients are benefitting from utilizing Microsoft cloud solutions in the Office 365 and Sharepoint space. Check out this episode to hear more about Stephanie’s upcoming speaking engagements and her strategies for growing her business, which have led this year’s winning a Fast 55 Award from the Cincinnati Business Courier.
Sam Schutte: Today’s show, we have Stephanie Donahue. She is the co founder of PAIT Group. We met through a mutual friend, here, in Cincinnati, and we’re going to talk about movement in the industry towards Office 365. Stephanie, welcome to the show.
Stephanie Donahue: Thanks for having me.
Sam Schutte: No problem, so maybe a good place to get started here is how did you get into this field, and how did you start out?
Stephanie Donahue: I think a lot of people, this day and age, that are in IT, didn’t start there. They come from other industries, or other backgrounds, and I’m probably one of the few people that actually has a degree in computer science, so I started at Ohio State. I kind of knew, in high school, that I wanted a computer science degree, and I went, and did that at Ohio State, and I came out, and just I take any kind of jobs that I could be hands on with.
Stephanie Donahue: I figured out pretty quick that I didn’t want to code, and maybe opposite of you, so my background, I ended up getting involved in a help desk scenario, so service industry. Figured out pretty quick that I liked to work with people, and so I went from there. Came up through the ranks. Help desk, network admin, and here I am today, still doing IT, techy stuff, and I love it. It’s great.
Sam Schutte: Are you from Cincinnati, originally?
Stephanie Donahue: No. Actually, I’m from, kind of, maybe Northwest Ohio. Findlay, Ohio, originally. Of course, I spent five years in Columbus, Ohio State, and then ended up down here in Cincinnati. I’ve been here though, for, gosh, I think about 15 years.
Sam Schutte: Okay, and how long have you been working at PAIT Group?
Stephanie Donahue: I started PAIT Group about seven years ago, and I had previously worked for a consulting firm, doing exactly what I do now, and I loved it, but things are really transitioning, and I saw a split that was happening. A lot of the folks that I worked with, they did a fantastic job with a really technical piece of the work. They were doing exchange migrations, and domain migrations, and things like that, and I had an opportunity to branch off, and I was doing SharePoint, which was a little more collaboration focused, and I decided that maybe I wasn’t quite the right fit for the all tech.
Stephanie Donahue: I could do the work, but, again, I really liked to work with people, and being able to get into a technology like SharePoint, its collaboration tool, allowed me to find that perfect merger, of working with people, working with the business, but, also, using my technical skills, and I started PAIT Group, because I saw this difference happening. Where the company wasn’t always knowing how to address collaboration, because they were so technology focused, and we came out to really make that splash in the collaboration space, in a slightly different way.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, because collaboration is a human process, and not a computer process, in a lot of ways, right?
Stephanie Donahue: Very much so. A lot of change management, a lot of handholding. It’s not, when you do an exchange migration, exchange host email, if you’re not familiar, and when you do a migration of email, you move the email over to the new server. It’s upgraded. Now, they’re moving to the cloud, and, when you get over there, you’re done. If the email’s running, that’s it.
Stephanie Donahue: That’s kind of all you have to do, but with collaboration tools, and specifically in Office 365 as our space, it’s a whole new world out there, and you’re trying to teach people how to work in a different way, whereas, email, you just use it, and it works, and that’s it, but, when you’re ruling out collaboration tools, you’re trying to teach people here’s a different way to communicate.
Stephanie Donahue: Here’s a different way to work, and this is why it’s important, and why you need to do it, because you also need their buy in, so it’s really a much different process, to engage with a business, and to figure out what’s going to solve their pain points, because, if you don’t have their buy in, they’re not going to use the tool, and it’s a very different conversation.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, and so maybe another question is, if you could describe the Microsoft ecosystem around this, and where collaboration fits in that. What are some of the tool names that are used for that? For folks that might not be familiar with all those layers, what does that look like?
Stephanie Donahue: What we used to have, we say on premises, the old school way. Exchange was your email. That was on prem. You had SharePoint, maybe, installed. You had a SharePoint server specifically, and that was it, and, now, as we move into the cloud, we have this ecosystem called Office 365, and, now, Microsoft 365 as well, if you go outside of that, so we’re talking a whole ecosystem of computers, and everything’s in the cloud.
Stephanie Donahue: You now have email in the cloud, you have collaboration in the cloud, meaning SharePoint might be your internet. It might be file storage for you, replacing that concept of having file shares. You now have Microsoft Teams, which, if you’re familiar with Slack, it’s definitely a Slack competitor. We’d like to think it’s a Slack killer.
Stephanie Donahue: You have this concept of being able to have conversation with each other, and that conversational format in a stream, more like your social media that you use every day. Like Facebook, or like Twitter, where you can engage with each other, but it’s something that everybody in the team can see.
Stephanie Donahue: You’re pulling all those conversations out of your email, and then, outside of that even, we’ve got tools that will manage video for you, you’ve got tools like planner, that will manage your tasks, and then you’ve got forms in workflow, so PowerApps, Microsoft Flow. Those are all things that are improving business processes around you, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Stephanie Donahue: There are so many productivity tools available in Office 365. I think that’s really where we come in, because it’s overwhelming, and it’s a big change for a lot of organizations, and so we just come in, and say, “Hey, we understand this is overwhelming, and it’s a lot to take in. We know you’re smart folks, but let us help you get introduced to the tools. Let us help you understand how you could use them, and how others in your industry are using them,” and that’s really where we get started with them.
Sam Schutte: Okay, and you mentioned that, I think it was Teams, you think is like a Slack killer, so why do you think that? How does it face off against Slack, which is pretty popular?
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah. You have your diehard Slack folks, right?
Sam Schutte: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Stephanie Donahue: They’ll tell you, “Nothing’s better than Slack,” but the reality of the situation is that a lot of organizations already own exchange, and, with that, they’re starting to purchase Office 365, and why do you want to pay for an additional third party tool, if you already own Teams?
Stephanie Donahue: Combined with the fact that Teams has come a long way, since it was first released, and it really has most of the core functionality that you’re going to need, so, preferences aside, Microsoft Teams is going to provide you that core collaboration platform, where you can work with each other, you can store files, and, really, a place that becomes the center of your work, and in your day-to-day.
Stephanie Donahue: It’s your conferencing tool, it’s your file sharing tool, it’s your conversation tool. I’m in Teams all day long now, so, from a competitive standpoint, I think it covers the same space, but a lot of folks already own it, and it comes down to, well, why go elsewhere, when you’ve got it already, at no additional cost?
Sam Schutte: Sure, and so, when you are helping customers implement this, and configure, and customize, and all that, are you also a Microsoft partner, or are you reselling their stuff as well, the actual licenses to them, or how do you work with Microsoft?
Stephanie Donahue: We are Microsoft partners, in the collaboration, portals and collaboration space, as well as cloud productivity, and we, also, I’m a Microsoft regional director. I was recently accepted into the program. We also have three Microsoft MVPs, so we have very close ties in with the product group. We’re working with those guys constantly, so yeah, we’ve got pretty close ties into Microsoft. We’re definitely looking to deepen that partnership. We’re also looking at selling licensing here in the next year as well, so that relationship in place, very, very important to us.
Stephanie Donahue: Everything moves really quickly in the cloud, and so you want to make sure that you’ve got the right connections, so that you can stay ahead of what’s happening next, because you don’t want to do something that, you don’t want to end up pinning yourself in a corner, or making a decision. That you don’t want to customize something, and then find out they’re rolling out a new piece of functionality, that, essentially, just made the customization you paid for irrelevant, so we want to make sure that those things, you’re aware, that they’re in the pipeline, and all of that becomes really important.
Sam Schutte: Yeah. Definitely. Making some changes to something, that is going to be a new bundle feature you didn’t even need to do, or you didn’t know is coming. You see that a lot.
Stephanie Donahue: It’s hard to keep up with. You need a partner to help you out, right? That’s where we come in.
Sam Schutte: For companies that are using this, so, when you look at like collaboration workspace, have you seen that’s allowed them to allow a lot more people to work from home? Is it driving them more in that area, or is it just focused on the office, that are just not having to leave their cubicle as much, or how does that affect that flexibility, I guess?
Stephanie Donahue: Definitely. Modern workplace includes the flexibility to work where you are, and that’s not necessarily just at home. It’s at the coffee shop, it’s I’m waiting for my kid to finish soccer, and I have nothing else to do, so I can spin through the messages, and see what’s going on. I do that frequently, as a traveler. I do a lot of sales, I travel across the country, to meet with customers, and I’m always on the go. I’m in an Uber, I’m at the airport, I’m at a hotel.
Stephanie Donahue: I can get to my stuff, no matter where I am. I don’t need VPN access anymore, and I get these push notifications to my phone, so, even as I’m out and about, I can see, if I want to, you can turn these off. You don’t like push notifications. I like them a lot, and Microsoft Teams will actually send me notifications, as I’m on the go, and I can glance down, see what the message is. Determine its importance, and, if I want to respond right away, I can do that from my phone.
Stephanie Donahue: Really great app, super easy to use, and I don’t have to mess with all that VPN stuff, which is, really, that’s been key for us. For those on the go, and our team, specifically, we are spread all over the country, so for us to be able to work together on projects, on internal initiatives, we’re on Teams all day long, because there’s only maybe 20% of us in the office at any given time.
Sam Schutte: I always find, with notifications like that, I’ll enable a bunch. I’ll turn on Slack. I probably have 50 different apps that could message me, and I’ll enable a bunch, and then I’m just getting slammed with them. Sometimes duplicate ones, and then you cut back, and, for the ones you actually care about, so it’s always a little bit of an ebb and flow to that, but I think that people being able to work on something, when it’s needed, and not say, “Well, you’ve got to wait till I get the office the next day.” I think there’s a huge impact on productivity with that. Of course, the downside is then you’re always working too, especially if you work for yourself.
Stephanie Donahue: Well, that’s what the quite modes are for. You do have a setting, where you can set, okay, this is my evening mode. I’m done. I don’t want notifications anymore, so that is your choice on maybe how often you want to check in on what’s going on at work.
Sam Schutte: Sure. I wanted to go back a moment. You talked about getting a computer science degree at the Ohio State, there, University, which I’m required to call it that, evidently, from my OSU friends.
Stephanie Donahue: Yes. You know, they’re trying to patent the … Right now, yes.
Sam Schutte: I saw that, the …
Stephanie Donahue: Yes. That’s interesting.
Sam Schutte: I got my computer science degree at University of Pittsburgh. I guess it’s the University of Pittsburgh, I don’t know, but I do think that, like you said, coming out, a lot of times, of course, it’s great to be able to have that technical background, but what really can allow you to leap ahead is if you can straddle that fence between the business world and tech, so I guess, for folks that are maybe on the other end of that, do you think that it’s still, a computer science degree, is still the right choice for someone, maybe who just started in college, to go into, or should they look more into there’s other degrees out there, that are more about the management? MIS, or whatever out there.
Stephanie Donahue: I think what’s great is that there’s a lot of options right now, as it relates to computer science, and I think it’s still a fantastic degree. I think that, for me, I didn’t end up being a coder, and so, potentially, I didn’t have to have the degree that I got, to do what I do now, but I think it’s a fantastic background I have.
Stephanie Donahue: I have that ability to understand what’s going on, at least at a high level, with my development team, even if I’m not the one who sits, and does the coding. There’s a deeper level of understanding there, so I think it’s a great thing to do. I think it gives you really good exposure into the different technologies, and, now, a lot of the universities are using, whether it’s a Chromebook, or Office 365, or whatever. They’re using a lot of these technologies now, to just engage.
Stephanie Donahue: Like my kids, my sixth grader, my ninth grader, they’re using Microsoft Teams at school, and that’s maybe less common at that age group, but very common in the college age group, and so I think being able to get in there, get exposure, and then I think, too, it’s important to co-op.
Stephanie Donahue: Go find what you like, because that’s how I figured out maybe I don’t enjoy coding, but I got my degree, but then I was also co-oping, so I knew network administration really clicked for me, and that was really my hands on learning, that I still use to this day, that’s a little more relevant, maybe, than what I had in the classroom. I think degrees are still good. I think it doesn’t hurt you to not have one, once you’ve got some years of experience under your belt, so I see benefits to both.
Sam Schutte: Well, that’s funny, because a lot of my co-op, or internships, were around network administration as well, which is great, because I use that a lot, because, a lot of times, developers only know the code, and they’re like, “I don’t understand why this network card isn’t working,” or something. I can come in and fix that. I guess it’s another sort of skill that you have in your tool-belt, right? Certainly, is a good thing to have.
Stephanie Donahue: The networking you learn in college, right?
Sam Schutte: Right. I’m curious, you mentioned, your kids’ school, they’re using Microsoft Teams. At my kids’ school, they’re using Google Classroom. We use Google, what do they call it? Whatever they call it now. Google Office, or, I don’t know. They keep on changing the name. Used to be Google Apps for Domains, or something, and I got that 12 years ago. We still use it, we’ve always used it. Where do you think Microsoft, does Microsoft beat that, in your opinion, and how so?
Stephanie Donahue: I think that, in the small business, so, when it comes to choosing applications for a small business, you really need ready made software, because you don’t have the staff that’s going to sit there, and customize it for what you need, right? Case in point, for us, for a long time, we really struggled from a project management standpoint. Before Office 365 came out, we didn’t have Teams. We’re trying to customize SharePoint, to make it what we needed, and that’s hard, when you have a small staff, and you’re running a million miles an hour, so I think probably very competitive, one-to-one, when you come to business.
Stephanie Donahue: As you get into larger organizations, where we’ve seen them struggle, with Google, is the scale, and really having … Microsoft’s done a really nice job on the security and compliance side of the house, and getting those extra layers in place, that you really need, once you get into HIPAA, and Sox Compliance, and maybe Government Cloud is another example, right?
Stephanie Donahue: They have all these different layers of protection, in addition to the collaboration tool functionality, so, once you get into that larger scale, larger amount of people, that’s really where we see Microsoft’s strength, and they really do a nice job meeting the needs of those larger customers, so, in all fairness, like I said, I think they’re fairly equivalent in the small business level, but, of course, I have a strong preference for Microsoft. I think it’s a great tool for small business too.
Sam Schutte: That’s a fair point, because all the Google app stuff kind of evolved out of the personal Gmail world, right? Microsoft probably evolved down, from enterprise exchange, down to, “Hey, can we do something that someone can use, a one person company?” Which you can do with Office 365. You wouldn’t have bought an exchange server for yourself. People did, but, you know, so-
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah, and so that’s actually been one of the big transitions we’ve seen. We used to, I’ve been in the mid market space a really long time. Most of my career has been in that, maybe 500 users, to 3/4,000 user space, and so we always felt left out with Microsoft. They always focused on the large enterprise. We call it the ivory tower, right?
Sam Schutte: Yeah.
Stephanie Donahue: Everything’s perfect. You have to do it this way, but, when you only have a handful of people working, or 50 people working, it’s not the same experience, as when you have 10,000 users, 20,000 users, but, what’s happened with 365 is that Microsoft is now embracing the mid market too. They see the value, because, let’s just take PAIT Group, for example, right?
Stephanie Donahue: When we first got started, we were trying to figure out how do we afford to spin up servers? How do we afford to, do we need a data center? How do we have backups? All this extra cost, just layer on top. We have to sit, and install updates. Who has time to do Windows Server updates, when you’re running a brand new business?
Stephanie Donahue: Now, we have the cloud, Office 365, spin it 10 and up, and it’s just there. You have disaster recovery, you have that ability to lean on backups for Microsoft. You may need extra too, but all of that stuff is just there. It’s in place. You don’t worry about updates. You don’t worry about downtime. It’s just easy. It’s the easy answer for small business, and then you still have the ability to scale into it, so you don’t have to worry that you’re going to outgrow the solution. It grows with you.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, that’s true. You know it can handle 10,000 employees, if you want it to.
Stephanie Donahue: Or 80,000, or figure.
Sam Schutte: With those bigger customers, well, I guess, really, any kind of midsize company as well, what are you seeing, or what have you seen, the adoption rate for the cloud solutions versus the on premise stuff? I don’t even know. Obviously, Microsoft will allow you to keep it on premise. I’m assuming they don’t force you to go into the cloud, do they?
Stephanie Donahue: Well, so you can keep things on premise, but the big thing is, eventually, and this is what we’re seeing now, we still have customers coming to us, saying, “I’m running SharePoint Server 2007, and I need to do something. What should I do?” They’re asking, “Do we stay on premises? Do we go with SharePoint 2019 on prem, which is fully supported? Do we move to the cloud?”
Stephanie Donahue: I will tell you, 99.9% of those scenarios will move to the cloud. We’re a very cloud heavy business, and our customers, the only ones who stay on premises, have some kind of blocker, either at the management level. There’s basically not a reason to stay on premises, unless you have headquarters in another country, and they don’t want your data in the US cloud. Those kind of things, but there’s not a functionality blocker.
Stephanie Donahue: You can base it, anything you can do on premises, you can do in the cloud, so it usually comes down to policy, or we’re not ready for the cloud, because we need to take some time, and do our security, and compliance review, and figure out how we protect what’s in the cloud. Maybe that’ll slow it down, but there’s no reason you can’t get there.
Sam Schutte: Yeah. I think, for the cloud solutions we’re deploying, we certainly hear the resistance about, “Well, but we’re [inaudible 00:20:30] compliant, so we can’t put it in the cloud.” Like, “No. That’s not,” so it’s mostly misunderstandings.
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah, it’s even easier. There’s all these ready made policy templates that you can use now. You just go in, and so Microsoft’s trying to meet you in the middle. What they’ll tell you is, “Yes, we provide the tools, to allow you to be compliant.” It is up to you, the customer, to come in, and understand these tools, and deploy the policies you need, in order to meet that compliance.”
Stephanie Donahue: Also, where we come in, again, there’s a lot of stuff out there. How do we use the tool? What kind of policies are available? What are the capabilities? Those are all things you can, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, reach out, find a partner. The Microsoft tech community also has a tremendous amount of information on that, so a really great place.
Sam Schutte: Well, and I think people, sometimes, object to security, and just thinking, “My stuff’s going to be in some data center I can’t walk through, I can’t see, perhaps.” In a Microsoft data center, in an Azure data center somewhere, and I always say, “Who do you think has better security resources?” If you’re a 50, 500, even 5,000 employee company, you’re not beating what Microsoft, or Google, or Apple, or any of the big guys are doing in their data centers.
Stephanie Donahue: That’s very true. They’re checking, and running testing every day, to try and make sure, and stay ahead of that, and, for us, again, being a small business, spam filters, and phishing, anti phishing filters, with the advanced threat protection that’s available now in 365. For us, I went in there, I enabled the policy, and, all of a sudden, it was catching all of those phishing emails that we were struggling with across the team. People are reporting things. It was that easy to turn it on. You didn’t have that on premises before, so just looking for little things like that, that make a huge impact.
Sam Schutte: Well, you can afford to let, if you’re doing stuff on premise, you can’t afford to let it get out of date, that sort of stuff, because it only takes to be one hour behind the latest patch, or something, and you’ll get nailed by something like that, or phishing email leak through, sort of thing.
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah.
Sam Schutte: Now, you’re also a Microsoft MVP.
Stephanie Donahue: Yes.
Sam Schutte: You mentioned that earlier, that you have a couple of those on your staff, so maybe talk about that program at a high level, what it is, for folks that aren’t familiar with it. How you get it, and what you got it for.
Stephanie Donahue: Sure, so the Microsoft MVP program is basically an award that Microsoft gives to people who participate in the community, and, when I say community, I mean these are folks that are going out into the world, to share Microsoft goodness with everyone, but they’re not necessarily getting paid for it, so things like SharePoint Saturday events in your local area, other conferences, like SharePoint Fest, and SPTechCon, North American Collaboration Summit’s another one.
Stephanie Donahue: There’s all these conferences all over the place, in addition to the ones that Microsoft puts on, and the folks that are Microsoft MVPs are going out, and they’re either answering your questions on the forums, they are tweeting, they’re blogging, they’re speaking at conferences, so we just, for me, it was just having a passion for the technology. Being able to go out and share that with others is exciting, and it’s fun. Gets us out of the office a little bit, but it also gives us a fantastic network of people to rely on.
Stephanie Donahue: I may not be an expert on, it’s hard. 365 has so many tools. How could I possibly be an expert on everything? I’m not, but I know the right person to call, because I know someone within that network that is an expert, within that particular area of 365, and they have MVPs for other things too. For Azure, for Exchange, and it’s been a constantly evolving thing, along with the technology, but you can find Microsoft MVPs across any of the Microsoft stack.
Sam Schutte: What is the sector specialization you got it for?
Stephanie Donahue: I’m under the Office Servers and Services branch, which specifically started as a SharePoint MVP, and has evolved now, because, of course, we include Microsoft Teams, being that Teams rides on SharePoint, and so we’re a little more inclusive there.
Sam Schutte: Okay. Great, so, when you look at back when you started your company, seven years ago, what was your first big break, first big customer project you got, and what was the real first game changing thing you did, you think, to put you on the path you’re on?
Stephanie Donahue: I think I have a couple answers there. I was fortunate. The community here, in Cincinnati, is fantastic, and people follow people, and maybe not necessarily companies, and so, early on, in the business, my best and earliest customers were those I’d already worked with, so that was very much appreciated, and I don’t know if I can, I don’t want to drop names, but they know who they are, and they’re near and dear to my heart, for giving me a chance early on.
Stephanie Donahue: Okay, so the biggest game changer that we really had with a customer, early on, with PAIT Group, we had the opportunity to work with an organization. They were a global manufacturing firm, and they had come from this space, where, as you know, the automobile industry really took a hit a while back, and, financially, really struggled, and so, when we got engaged with this organization, they had a .net internet that was ancient.
Stephanie Donahue: It was really old. It was all text driven. Difficult to update, difficult to find information on what they were looking for, and the great thing was they had this director, that really understood where they needed to go, and, as they started coming out of this financial dip, they were going, “Oh my gosh! All of our technology, all of our applications, they’ve all been homegrown. They’ve been bandaid after bandaid, and it’s time to upgrade. It’s what do we do? Where do we even get started?”
Stephanie Donahue: That first meeting, we had to talk about the difference between intranet and internet. It was bare bones, because, to their credit, they had people that had worked there their entire careers. They didn’t have any exposure to other technologies, and that’s not uncommon for large organizations, and it speaks to how well they must treat their employees, which is great, but, when it comes to technology, they just really had no idea where to start.
Stephanie Donahue: What was great about the person we were working with at the time, he truly understood what was next, but they’d had a failed SharePoint implementation. They tried to move some policies and procedures into the cloud. It didn’t go well, and they’re like, “I don’t know about this cloud thing. I don’t know about this SharePoint thing, but I think we’re supposed to go this way. Everybody says it great, but we’re not totally sold.”
Stephanie Donahue: We were still talking about competitors to SharePoint, and maybe they should go that direction, and this was, I think, maybe more than a year of conversations, that it took, to get them educated, to get them understanding what we could do, and how we could do it, and that very first project we came in, and we took that policies and procedures library, and saw that they had folder, after folder, after folder, and acronyms, and just messy, and we came in, and did metadata, and we gave them a search based page, so, if you think about how you search for shoes on Amazon, right?
Sam Schutte: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Stephanie Donahue: If you go onto Amazon, and try to go folder, and folder, and folder, to find something, you’re going to be out there all day, but, if you search for shoes, and you go, “Okay. Well, I’m just going to check my boxes. I want a size seven, and I want them to be black, and I want Nike’s,” and you have really relevant search results across many different stores, and so that was the same concept we brought to them, for their policies and procedures.
Stephanie Donahue: We said, “Okay. You can search for a keyword, but, now, I’m going to filter by language,” because they were global, and I could filter by department, and I could filter on, whether it was a form, or a policy, and so we took that keyword to the next level, by creating a search environment, very similar to an experience that they have at home.
Stephanie Donahue: Many people know how to shop on amazon.com. Here’s working in the same manner, and so we were able to change their mindset, over we don’t have to burry everything in a folder. We can search for it, in the same way that we do things at home, and that was the first break that we had with them, to go, “Gosh!” The light bulb went off, and they went, “Oh, this is interesting. This is a different way of working,” but we were still like, “Okay. Now, what’s next? How do we get to the next level?”
Stephanie Donahue: We shared a case study with them, where one of their, I think it was a joint venture company, something along those lines, where they were getting into 365, and they were like, “Okay. Well, we’re following what this other group is doing. We’ve bought in, but we don’t really know what’s next,” and that group was using 365 Video for their quality team, and so, out in the manufacturing plants, on the floor, they would have quality issues, or they would have communication issues across all the plants, because they’d run into that same issue over and over, and it wasn’t getting communicated.
Stephanie Donahue: This group, in the case study, had implemented 365 Video, so that they could collaborate around that video, and, all of a sudden, the executive team, it was like the gates opened, and it was like, “Quality impacts our bottom line, ROI,” and it was like game on at that point. They were like, “How do we do this? How do we get there?”
Stephanie Donahue: In two years, we took them from that simple example of policies and procedures, to a multilingual, I think they were up to seven languages on their homepage. Multilingual internet, with, they eventually rolled out Skype for Business, they had Surface Hubs, they rolled into Microsoft Teams later on, as that was released. Forms, all the way down to the manufacturing plant floor, and we had developed some of those forms for tablets, and found that they were actually using their cellphones, because they were so easy to use.
Stephanie Donahue: And so here’s an organization that started with just this .net internet, that was clunky, that transitioned digital workplace, two years, that they’ve completely changed the way they work, they’ve changed the way they communicate globally, and they’ve got this great platform, that they were paying the same amount.
Stephanie Donahue: When they got started is when they got done, because it was all just included. They were just taking advantage of what they already owned, and then they were starting to look into dynamics, and CRM, and being able to pull in, “Okay, how we do connect all that we’re doing on the operational side with our sales process?”
Stephanie Donahue: It was a really cool opportunity for us. That was the first time we really came in, and really hit it big, and we went, “This is something. This is cool,” and that’s where my passion is. It’s like we changed the way an organization worked, and that was really cool for us.
Sam Schutte: It’s amazing, how much digital tools do that. Just the capability to completely change the way someone’s working, or the whole business is functioning, and you talked about some of the selling points, and I think those are probably selling points for anybody looking at, or at least some of the selling points for anybody looking at rolling something like this out.
Sam Schutte: You talked about reduced total cost of ownership, if you don’t have your own servers on site, and doing cloud stuff. With the search stuff, if you call it federated search, or whatever you want to call that, it’s that visibility, I think it’s the same for quality management too. It’s about just visibility into what is actually happening in your company, but there’s also just market drive, I think. Of people want to have tools within their walls of their business, that are at least as good as what they have at home, for their …
Sam Schutte: You’ve got your Alexa at home, that can tell you whatever by speech recognition. How many companies have something to that level, of ease of use, for what they do in their job? Like you said, a lot of companies, they might have some clunky thing that’s out of date, or whatever, and so, when they get something more, I don’t know what you call it, web three-oh, or whatever.
Stephanie Donahue: Modern, we say modern.
Sam Schutte: Modern enough, in there. Web nine-oh, or whatever. Eventually, we’ll get to … They keep on adding different web versions. It can transform the way everything looks. I guess are there other drivers, you think, in the market, that are driving people to make some of these other changes, and outside of the ones we listed off here?
Stephanie Donahue: I think the speed of business is important. People are starting to understand that their competitors are doing this, and, if they’re not, they’re behind. In addition to that, we’ve got a whole new wave of young people coming out of school, coming out of college. They’ve literally been holding devices their whole life, and so we’re trying to figure out how to mesh those people with those that have been using printing paper, and using Excel spreadsheets for everything, and these kids coming in, they’re like, “This isn’t okay. Why can’t I do this with my phone?”
Stephanie Donahue: They’re confused, so you’ve got to start accommodating those coming out of school, because they’re the future. They’ve got all these great ideas, and you want to integrate them, but they’re going to be attracted to the companies that are moving forward, and to the companies that are innovating, because that’s what they demand. They have it every day in their personal lives, and they’re expecting it in the workplace, and so, if you’re wanting to recruit and retain top talent, it’s a huge factor, because they are looking for that.
Stephanie Donahue: They’re looking for flexibility, they’re looking for modernization, they’re looking for ways they can contribute, and make a big impact, and so I think that’s another kind of factor, that maybe sits in the background, that’s lingering, that I think is going to be a really big push here, in the next 5 to 10 years. It’s going to make a big difference for hiring.
Sam Schutte: I think you’re absolutely right. I remember, probably 10 years ago, I had a gentleman I was working with, that he was right near retirement age, and he came, and he said, “We had this ‘kid’. He just quit, because he doesn’t like the computer software that we have,” and, to him, that was like quitting, because he didn’t like the coffee. The office was complete … Insane that you would do that, right?
Stephanie Donahue: Didn’t get it, yeah.
Sam Schutte: I said, “No. It’s more like if you’re a mechanic, and your company gives you busted, broken tools to work with. You would quit for that, right? Or you’d buy your own, right?”
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah.
Sam Schutte: And so, in the course, we see that too. I’ll bring you into Vice type stuff happening, that you’ve got to support, but, no, I think that’s huge, and 10 years ago, I think, that was something that people laughed about a little bit, but I’ve had numerous customers now say, “We have to make sure the millennials are happy. We have to make sure this is part … ” It’s like top three reason, which is pretty crazy. It used to be like reason number 15, you would even consider it.
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah, go put the young kid in the corner, right? It’s a different-
Sam Schutte: Yeah, like, “Well, we might as well do this. I guess it’ll keep them happy too,” but, now, it’s like, “We’re getting people not taking a job, because they say, I don’t know, ‘What kind of email do you have?’ If we say we have X,” I don’t know, or asking, “Do we get a cellphone with the job? Do we get a laptop with the job?” More simple questions like that, and, if you say, “No. We have a desktop computer for you,” or something, it’s a problem.
Stephanie Donahue: It matters. It’s a competitive edge, for sure.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, so, when you look at, you talk about these client stories, you look across all your clients, you talk about ROI, so what … Maybe you have to look over several years, I don’t know, but what do you think average dollar savings, percentage savings, something, what is the real dollar value to rolling out some of the solutions that you’ve-
Stephanie Donahue: That’s the big question. We really struggle in a collaboration space to determine ROI, and a lot of that’s because we don’t necessarily have the measurement from where we started. If you think about the process improvement, and something as simple as vacation request, how much time did it take you to address the request, if it was sitting in your email inbox, if it was on a paper on your desk? What’s the efficiency in being able to push that through more quickly, by an electronic form?
Stephanie Donahue: That might not be the right thing to ask. The efficiency might be that I can look, and notice, maybe, if I had approved three different vacation requests in my email, at three different times, it never occurred to me that three of them were on the same day, and that same day happened to be exactly when we were going live with one of our best customers, because I didn’t have any context around it, but, if I’m putting all that into an online system, I have a dashboard, and I can see that maybe one other person’s already requested off. That’s how we can handle that particular day. These other two really need to take time off, at a different time.
Stephanie Donahue: That’s a really basic example, but that realtime data, going back to that manufacturing plant floor, right? They were putting in audit forms, and in their phone, and that’s coming back into a dashboard, which goes into Power BI, which is another piece of the 365 stack. Dashboards, and realtime data, they’re game changers, so it’s just so hard to put ROI around that stuff, because we don’t necessarily know where we were when it started, and we didn’t even … Sometimes, we don’t even anticipate how good that next step is, because we can’t even imagine what’s possible, so that’s there are no numbers. I don’t have numbers.
Stephanie Donahue: We are desperate. We are trying to figure out a way to put numbers against that. The easiest one is moving your conferencing into Teams, if you’re paying for Webex, or any of those competitors that, Zoom, or whatever it is. That’s an easy one. You move that into Teams, and that’s a pretty comparable solution from a conferencing standpoint. You’re going to save a lot of money.
Sam Schutte: Yeah. Well, I think, often, the best ROI numbers you’re going to get are going to be the ones your clients give you, so you’re going to have to ask them, because anything you say they’re not going to buy. They’re not going to believe, if you say, “You’re going to save a million dollars a month.” Right. Okay. Sure, but, if you say, hey, if you have 600 people, and they save five minutes a week, what does that actually save you? Then we’ll do that 30 times, right? They’ll tell you, “Heck, that saves us a million a month.” You say, “See? Okay. Write that number down,” so it’s tricky, I think, that sort of stuff. It’s definitely out there, but it can be very hard to tabulate, I guess, to your point.
Stephanie Donahue: What is the speed of communication worth in your organization?
Sam Schutte: Yeah. How much does a mistake cost? Like triple booking a vacation, what does it really cost to fix it? Something. It’s not zero. How do you select projects you’re going to work on, and what do you think, what are you really looking to do? What’s your ideal client really look like?
Stephanie Donahue: It’s funny, because a lot of folks ask, “What industry do you focus on?” We ran our numbers, and we are even across every industry. It’s like if you have Office 365, we can work with you, and so it really becomes it’s not about the type of business. We work with small businesses, we work with large businesses, but what we’re really seeking, if we narrow down what that field looks like, is an organization that understands that they need change, and that understands, and is willing to put forth the effort it takes, to do something about needing that change, because you can’t just roll out technology, and expect people to use it, and that’s one of the biggest mistakes that we see.
Stephanie Donahue: Is there’s just this expectation, “Well, I gave them Teams. Why aren’t they using it? I gave them a SharePoint internet. Nobody cares,” and what really needs to happen is an understanding internally, that it’s more than just the tech. It takes time. You have to do your discovery, you have to figure out the pain points, and then, when you implement it, you want involvement from your stakeholders. You don’t want to put this into a silo, and then just deploy it, and say here you go.
Stephanie Donahue: You want feedback, you want ownership, you want accountability from those groups, so involving them early on really helps you gain all of that, and so we’re looking for organizations that are ready and willing to make change, to involve their business, to get outside of that stigma, that, “Well, our business users don’t know what they’re doing,” because they do.
Stephanie Donahue: They know and understand their business, they know and understand their role. It’s our job to help translate that technology for that business role, and so that’s really what we’re looking for, is the organizations that are open to these ideas, that are excited about change, and that will support it, top down. That’s going to be our best experience, and, like I said, it doesn’t matter the industry, it doesn’t matter the size of the organization. It’s about the mindset of that organization, and whether or not they’re ready for that.
Sam Schutte: The culture, a lot, I guess, ties into that.
Stephanie Donahue: Yes, it’s definitely a culture thing, and I hear all the time, “Our people, we have file shares, and they’ve been doing this, and we’re a mess,” and anybody can get started. Anybody. You just dig your way out of a corner, or work your way out of a corner. You just get started somewhere. As long as you’ve got the mindset to change, it doesn’t matter where you start.
Sam Schutte: And so, once you’ve found an organization that is embracing change, how do you execute on that project? What are the logistics around that? Maybe what does working with you look like?
Stephanie Donahue: We’re big fans of discovery, first and foremost, and the reason why that’s important, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been handed a requirements document, like, “Here, this is what we want,” and we’ll read it, and we know they don’t even know what’s possible yet, so we like to work with folks that, if we can come back to you, and say this is a great start on your requirements.
Stephanie Donahue: What we’d love to do is pick this apart a little bit. Let us come on site, let’s talk about it. Let’s meet with the groups, let’s get some additional feedback, let’s expand on those requirements, and let’s really understand what are your pain points, where do you want to go, what are your goals? What do you want to get out of this, and then we can also educate, here are the tools, here are how other people use those tools.
Stephanie Donahue: The prime example is just coming to us, and saying, “We want SharePoint.” Well, do you want just SharePoint, or do you want Teams? Have you thought about Teams? What about all these other things? We just like to expand the scope a little bit. Look at it from a larger roadmap perspective. Where do you want to go longterm? What are your short-term goals?
Stephanie Donahue: We help you figure out how to get there. You don’t even have to know anything about SharePoint. You don’t have to know anything about Teams. That’s not your role. You tell us, as a business, what you need, in order to get your job done. We’ll help you figure out how to implement the technology side of things, and that’s really where we like to get started. A lot of education, a lot of conversations, and a lot of learning on both sides.
Sam Schutte: Okay, and then, once you get through that, do you find that folks are going onsite, to customer sites a lot, and how does that look?
Stephanie Donahue: It’s amazing what you can learn, simply by walking in someone’s conference room, and so we’re big fans of being onsite. We like to be onsite early on, during the sales process, and we like to be onsite during discovery. I can tell you a lot about an organization, when you walk into that conference room, and there’s no projector, there’s no TV, and then everyone walks in with a paper pad, and a pen. You’re going, “Okay. I know where we’re starting,” right?
Sam Schutte: Yeah.
Stephanie Donahue: It’s not judgment. It’s saying I know what this organization’s culture is, in this point in time, and I know that this technology will be a slower uptake for them. It’ll be a bigger learning curve, and that’s okay, but we like to know that upfront, so we know how to approach you, and we know this even before we start the conversation, so little things like that, that you don’t necessarily see.
Stephanie Donahue: The only indicator you really have on the phone is if you set up a conference call, and nobody knows how to join the conference call. That’s also an indicator, and, again, there’s no judgment. It’s just a matter of understanding where they’re at, and being on site, getting to know the culture, getting to know the people, is more than half of what that discovery is about.
Stephanie Donahue: It’s not just about the processes, and the technical pieces. It’s about who are they? What do they want to accomplish? How do they operate every day? We love to be on site in front of people during that process.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, and we were talking earlier about most of your clients are not based here in Cincinnati, I think, and so there’s a fair amount of travel involved, to some degree, for those types of clients, but I guess being based in Cincinnati, here, how have you, what have you learned about this local tech market, and what is that community like? I guess, here, for Microsoft, or for you, in terms of your business.
Stephanie Donahue: I think the Cincinnati market’s fantastic. I’ve been in IT, here, in Cincinnati, for the better part of 15 years. I know a lot of the local folks in tech, and I think it’s a great community. Both from a startup perspective, and from a technical perspective, and lots of headquarters, lots of good business here, and lots of technology, and lots of things going on, so I think it’s great, and the only reason we haven’t really stuck around, in terms of business, we’ve just had …
Stephanie Donahue: You know, there’s a lot of other organizations here that do what we do, so we’ve gone elsewhere, to find easy markets to play in, and to get started, as a new business, as you know. Sometimes, being a younger business is hard, when there’s a lot of competition, but I think we’re ready to be back. We’ve been around seven years. I think we’re pretty strong. We’ve got a lot of really highly skilled folks on staff, so, I don’t know. You might see me around Cincinnati a little more often.
Sam Schutte: How are those clients finding you, and what kind of marketing, and outreach, and stuff are you doing, to build, get into those areas, outside of the city, or locally?
Stephanie Donahue: We do quite a bit of marketing. We actually hit the Fifty Five and Five top Microsoft partners for marketing, which was a huge honor. Shout out to our director of operations and marketing, Stacy Burris. She’s fantastic. She’s done a really great job, so we do a lot. We are very social as an organization, so we’re out doing the conferences, like I mentioned before. We’ve got MVPs on staff, so you’ll see us out at local events, but you’ll also see us doing webinars.
Stephanie Donahue: We have the Joy of SharePoint webinar, that we do on a monthly basis. A lot of good power user admin kind of content going on there. You’ll see us out on Twitter. We do a lot of blogging on our website paitgroup.com. We’ve got a blog there, and just, in general, we have a lot of good relationships. We work with some pretty sizable vendors, to partner with them, and we love …
Stephanie Donahue: You know, it’s always better, when you get a lead from someone that already knows you, and those are the best kind of leads, because they come in, and they’re familiar with whoever you work with. Your vendor, your relationship, your friend, whomever it is. They come in a little warm, and they have a good feeling, because IT is very much about trust. You’re making a big change, and, when you’re implementing something like 365, it’s kind of scary. You’re going to the cloud. You’re responsible for going to the cloud, and you’re like, “Man, if anybody gets into this environment, if I do this wrong, we’re spending so much money.”
Stephanie Donahue: It’s not just a decision, it’s your career, and you feel like your career is on the line for that decision, and we try to make that an easy transition, and build that trust with our customers, and so that’s, when they come in from a referral, it’s a little easier to build that trust, because I think, innately, everyone’s pretty guarded, when it comes to making these kind of decisions, and you really need to work a little harder, to earn that trust upfront.
Sam Schutte: I think, also, the discovery process you mentioned helps build a lot of trust too. Starting off small, just so that people can get an idea of how you work, and who you are, rather than just jumping into some six figure contract, or something. No one does that, right?
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah. We start small, and that’s why, right?
Sam Schutte: Yeah.
Stephanie Donahue: We try to make it low risk. Come in, we’ll do discovery. We’re not quoting the whole implementation, until you get to know us, and we get to know you. We feel like it’s a little more fair that way.
Sam Schutte: Absolutely, and so, in addition to the recognition you have from Microsoft, I guess based on the volume, or your investment and marketing of their stuff, sort of, is what that was for, is that right?
Stephanie Donahue: The Fifty Five and Five recognition that we received was really about watching your activity in the social media environment, so, whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s blogging, Facebook, et cetera, they’re watching you, to see how often are you posting? Are you getting any traction, or any engagement with your post? And so we were honored to be in that top list. I’m trying to think of how many there were on the list, but to even make it on that list was huge, and a really big honor, which means-
Sam Schutte: Probably thousands of companies, I would assume, in the US.
Stephanie Donahue: I think they said like 49,000 were reviewed, and to end up in that top 50 was just huge, so we were really honored.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, and, in addition to that, you also won an award recently, more just for your growth and stuff, as a company here, which I guess, was that from the Business Courier, is that right?
Stephanie Donahue: Yes, so the Cincinnati Business Courier every year awards, they call it the Fast 55 Awards, and it’s for those companies here in Cincinnati that are experiencing a lot of growth, and so, for us, year over year growth over the past three years. We submitted, and just thought, do you know, we’ll see what happens, and there we were.
Stephanie Donahue: Now, they do an award even amongst the folks that get recognition, and, of course, we didn’t win the award, but we were recognized as the top, gosh! I’m trying to think of how many were in that group. Maybe top 10, or so, within our category, so, being a small business, we’re not up against the really large companies. They, of course, have different levels of competition, and we’re in the smallest business category, but, definitely, growing fast, and looking to continue to grow. Hiring now, actually, so hoping to bring some new folks onboard here, at the end of the year.
Sam Schutte: Okay, and how have you managed that growth successfully? Not lost control of it, as it’s grown.
Stephanie Donahue: It’s interesting. I think owning a business is a lot of the people side of things. You always, I think, come into owning a business, and think the hardest part is going to be to find sales, and to do the technical work, and it’s actually managing the people, and making sure that your employees are happy, and I’m really excited, because we actually had two employees recently pass the five year mark. We’ve got more coming, right in behind them, so I really feel like our scaling has been consistent growth, but not too fast.
Stephanie Donahue: We didn’t want to grow too fast. We’ve done it in a very steady way, so that it was manageable, and it’s all about the people. It’s about our culture, making sure that our employees have goals to work towards, that we’re supportive of those goals, that we’re giving them opportunities to grow their skillsets, and, of course, in 365 there’s never a dull moment. There’s always something to learn, but making sure they have the resources to do their job effectively, and that they’re well supported, so that’s been a really big piece of our growth. Is just making sure our people are well taken care of.
Sam Schutte: Also, we talked a little bit about speaking engagements that you’re doing. You have a pretty big one coming up here in November, in Orlando, for Microsoft.
Stephanie Donahue: Yes, so Microsoft’s biggest conference of the year. Microsoft Ignite, coming up this November. Basically, it’s all … It used to be an IT pro focused conference, technical conference, and they’re really branching out into more developer type topics as well this year, but there’s a ton of people descending on Orlando, to come down, and learn all about Microsoft’s latest updates.
Stephanie Donahue: They store up their big updates for this conference, so we’ll hear all the new things that are coming out. They’ll be doing lots of demos, and sessions. The expo center, the expo floor will have all the vendors, if you want to go talk to folks that are selling products around 365, and Azure space. It’s just a really great conference.
Sam Schutte: Okay, and what are you speaking on there?
Stephanie Donahue: Specifically, I’m taking a departure from my normal technical sessions, and I will be part of the Diversity and Tech group, and it is a fantastic kind of division that Microsoft’s really focused on this year. There’s a big push, I think, for diversity, in a lot of organizations, and Microsoft is fully embracing that as well, and so what I’ll speaking on, several different topics.
Stephanie Donahue: The first is how to become a Microsoft MVP, and that’s, if you think about it from a US perspective, that’s one thing. We have a lot of opportunity here, but it also impacts greatly those in other countries. Microsoft Ignite pulls in a lot of people from other countries, and so this is, sometimes, their first experience, of learning about the opportunities to work with Microsoft more directly, and, last year, I know they had a woman who attended, and is now, I believe, her country’s first Microsoft MVP.
Stephanie Donahue: And so it’s my session is really just going to be helping others. How do I go and share what I knew with my community? How do I make an impact in my local community, as a Microsoft MVP, and what are some of the cool, fun things I get to do as a result of that too? That’s one session.
Stephanie Donahue: The other session I’ll be doing is about how to be a good mentor, and mentee, and one of the programs I participate in, through the Microsoft Diversity and Tech group, is the mentoring program, and Microsoft will match anybody. Really, if you just sign up, they have a new app, and you can sign up for this app. I’m blanking on the name of it, but we can put it in the show notes, and you can get matched with someone, so, if you’re someone, you’re like, “Man, I really wish I had a mentor, but I just don’t know anybody,” it’s a great way to get connected with someone in your space.
Stephanie Donahue: Someone that shares your interest, or that’s maybe a step ahead of you in their career, and I’ve been participating as a mentor probably about a year now, and it’s fantastic. It’s so much fun to help someone grow, and learn, and the benefit, I’m also learning from them too, and I’ve had a really great experience, so I’m going to talk a little bit about being a mentor, being a mentee. How I’ve had personal success with my mentee, and just some tips and tricks, and things like that, to have a good experience, but lots of fun.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your mentee, I guess.
Stephanie Donahue: Yeah. Shout out to-
Sam Schutte: What you’re helping them do.
Stephanie Donahue: Another shout out, for Mike Swantek. He’s given me permission to use his name, if I talk about him, in the podcast, but he is someone who is just looking to get into the Microsoft community. Looking to do more speaking, and blogging, but, also, looking to strengthen his skills at work, and his career, and so we’ve been talking. We talk every other week for an hour, and we just talk about what’s going on at work, how are you doing on social media? Do you have any questions, concerns?
Stephanie Donahue: We just talk through it, and we make book suggestions for each other, different things that we’ve run into, and it’s been so much fun. He’s a great guy, and he is killing it right now. He’s doing a great job, and I’m pretty excited, because he’s doing one of his first SharePoint Saturday speaking engagements, they’re coming up. I believe in Pittsburgh, if I have that right, so very excited. Love to see people grow, and do new, exciting things. It’s really cool.
Sam Schutte: Is he in Cincinnati as well, or?
Stephanie Donahue: He’s actually based out of Michigan, so it’s, again, remote, right?
Sam Schutte: Yeah.
Stephanie Donahue: We hop on Teams, and we have a Teams conference call.
Sam Schutte: Very cool, so, for folks that are out there listening, and have learned about what you do, what are some of the top three reasons that they should reach out to you, the top three things that you can help them with at PAIT Group?
Stephanie Donahue: I would say, number one, first and foremost, Office 365, if you’re looking to create a modern workplace, or improve your collaboration, whether that’s a SharePoint internet, using Microsoft Teams. Learning about the 365 ecosystem. We’ve got folks who can do anything, from internet design, to user adoption, training. Sitting down, and going, “What the heck do we do with this Office 365 thing?”
Stephanie Donahue: The whole deployment planning engagement is something that we always start with, but we also have folks that can still do custom development, forms and workflow, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow. We are Microsoft Business Applications partners as well. We’re a charter partner in the [Biz Apps Program 00:58:52], so super excited about that too, so lots of different skillsets. If you need help, definitely a big space for us.
Sam Schutte: Okay.
Stephanie Donahue: Number two was just talking about diversity in tech, and the mentorship program, so, if you want to learn anything more about that space, either what I’m talking about at Ignite, or how you can get involved locally, would love to hear from you on that, and, number three, entrepreneurship.
Stephanie Donahue: I love what I do. Owning a small business is fantastic. It has its ups and downs. It’s not perfect, but it’s been a really cool ride, and so love to talk about that stuff. Loved to connect with people, especially locally, here in Cincinnati. Trying to get out a little more.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, and if folks want to connect with you, what are your web, email, phone details?
Stephanie Donahue: You can connect with me, so we’ll do social media first, maybe Twitter, stephkdonahue, and you can find me at paitgroup.com, and email address, sdonahue, it’s S-D-O-N-A-H-U-E @paitgroup.com.
Sam Schutte: Awesome, so thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been great to hear what you’re doing, and learn more about that Microsoft Office 365 environment, and all the cool stuff going on there.
Stephanie Donahue: Thanks for having me. It’s been a lot of fun, and maybe we can trade, I have you on my podcast as well.
Sam Schutte: Yeah, that’d be great, and your podcast is called Techsplaining, I believe, right?
Stephanie Donahue: Yes, Techsplaining, and I’m on there with three other Microsoft MVPs, one of which I work with, my business partner, Mark Rackley, and two other Microsoft MVPs, so we talk all things tech.
Sam Schutte: Awesome! Link to that as well. All right, thank you.
Stephanie Donahue: Thank you.
