How Grove Technologies Has Changed in the Era of COVID-19 and What It Means for You

2020 Recap

With 2020 fading into the distance, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year. It was a challenging year for all of our clients and for Grove. The pandemic brought a new level of uncertainty and fear to the forefront of many of our clients’ minds, and it seems appropriate to address how Grove changed to ensure we provided the best possible support for you.

Because of the stay-at-home mandates in most states we operate in, Grove started working from our respective homes in January 2020, as did many of our clients. Our business model pivoted from providing on-site support to remote support that is tailored to the needs of our clients’ staff. This meant more remote meetings and less on-site appointments, as well as the need for active management of home devices (home Wi-Fi networks and more) to ensure that staff members could do their jobs.

During 2020, we became experts in remote management of computer systems, network systems, data storage systems, backup systems, and more. Since we relied on managing many of these issues in person, we quickly adapted with new technologies and tools to accomplish the tasks needed to ensure operational efficiency and security for our clients in a fully remote setting.

Security became one of the most important concerns of our clients in 2020, and to respond we started offering a whole range of security solutions ranging from policy and procedure writing to documentation and dark web scanning and more.

We count ourselves fortunate to have partnered with such amazing clients over the course of 2020. While it was a scary time, we grew, broadened our service offerings, and met the needs and challenges of our clients.

Thank you for your continued support and partnership with us. If it wasn’t for your financial commitment, we might not be here today.

Big Changes, New Team, and What That Means for You

While 2020 was a tumultuous year for all, Grove and our team grew! On that note, I am pleased to introduce three new hires that we made in late 2020 and early 2021.

Blog Photo — All precautions were taken & CDC guidance followed to ensure the safety of all our team members, including but not limited to vaccinations, social distancing, masking in a large outdoor space with a limited number of participants.

In February 2021, we welcomed Mikaela Donelan to the team. Mikaela is helping Grove establish both a project management and client success department here at Grove and has hit the ground running by providing top-notch project management services. While we have always been detail-oriented, we’re taking that to the next level. With a dedicated project manager, we are able to achieve the level of organization and transparency that our clients expect.

On top of being an amazing project manager, Mikaela is also our clients’ main touchpoint for any account/service issues, so she can ensure that our clients are not only satisfied with the services we provide but are actually getting the most out of their financial investment with Grove.

In March 2021, we hired Nikki Lewis, our newest Mac Expert. Nikki worked with Apple directly for the past six years as a manager in the Applecare department where she helped clients triage their issues related to MacOS and iOS. Nikki is helping to provide support to our already amazing team of Mac support experts, so we can provide that one-on-one personal experience to each of our clients.

Finally in May 2021, we hired Vince Borho. Vince is a contractor that is helping our clients with systems administration tasks and engineering-level modifications. From sweeping changes to Office365 or helping us tackle data migrations, Vince is helping our team ensure that we have multiple qualified engineers on hand whenever our clients need change either on the fly or as planned.

Please join me in welcoming our newest hires to the Grove team!

Fully Distributed Company

2020 not only taught us that we need to pivot with the needs of our customers, but also that we do not need to physically interact with our clients as often as we once had. Our business model has now changed to reflect that and that has manifested itself in a few different ways.

Grove is now looking for the best talent nationwide. While we would love to say that all of our staff live and work right here in the District, the reality is that one of the hard lessons we learned in 2020 is that there are amazing people working all over the country, and they are transforming the way we do business. Not only are we more diverse because of this shift, but we are also able to provide better services and solutions.

Grove will continue to work in a fully distributed model. While we will continue to operate in a co-working space in D.C., we will primarily continue to operate from our respective homes, and we’ll continue to provide remote support first and on-site support second.

Grove will continue to offer on-site appointments with proper advance notice. While we are a fully distributed company now, we do understand that you will need help on-site at your location, especially as restrictions ease. We will work hard to accommodate these needs.

Finally, now that we are growing, the goal for Jon, our CEO and founder, is to transition slowly from Mac Expert to fully operating as CEO for the business. Given our expansion, it’s important to ensure that we focus on the operations of our own company to ensure we meet the expectations of our clients. This is the next natural step in our growth plan as we transition out of our start-up phase.

What does this mean for you? For anyone who has been closely working with Jon, nothing will change until December 2022. Between now and then, Jon will slowly start handing off responsibilities to other members of the team to ensure that our clients’ needs are handled appropriately.