Missouri Foundation for Health

“I couldn’t do my job without PDQ. It’s super easy to use, it’s a good price, and they offer great support.”

A small IT department with a big responsibility

The Missouri Foundation for Health is an independent nonprofit that serves the uninsured and the underinsured in the state of Missouri. It’s the largest organization of its kind in the state and one of the largest in the nation.

As its lone IT manager, David North is responsible for tracking machines and updates across the entire organization, a job that affects the insurance services of hundreds of Missourians.

Less monitoring, more insuring

Before PDQ, David was aware of other deployment software solutions, but their steep learning curve and high price made him reluctant to implement any of them. He would often spend half a day figuring out how to get the right command line with the right switches to send updates across the network. Now, David doesn’t need to waste valuable  time testing switches.

“What attracted me to PDQ was the ease of which I could grab a software package and then push it out to one machine or even five machines. I thought, ‘Wow! This is so easy.’”

As a one-man show, David often gets interrupted with various requests throughout the day. When it comes to healthcare and insurance services, those interruptions take priority over software updates. That leaves David with lists of updates that still need to be completed at a later time. With PDQ’s automated updates, he can focus on the task at hand instead of worrying about testing software updates or monitoring patch management.

“You’ve got MSI installations, and I need it to be quiet. It could take a while to get that figured out and test it without interrupting the machine. PDQ does all that for me.”

Set and forget any update on any machine

David began automating his work with Deploy, and it wasn’t long before he tried PDQ Inventory and things changed for the faster and easier.

As David became more familiar with PDQ’s capabilities, he realized that the true value of the software comes from having both Inventory and Deploy work together to spot and carry out necessary updates. Whether an employee is out for vacation or for lunch, he can set packages to run and watch them deploy as employees come back online.

“I couldn’t do my job without PDQ Inventory.”

According to David, the best thing about PDQ Inventory is that he can check which machines have updated, then deploy updates to only the machines that need it. This helps him approach patch management with a true “set it and forget it” mentality.

PDQ Deploy: impressing bosses since 2019

One day, David’s boss asked him whether he had remembered to download Mitel to the company’s computers, so that employees could make outbound calls using their laptops instead of a cell phone. David had completely forgotten to include Mitel in the updated image for the computers.

“PDQ is a good time saver at a great price.”

Instead of spending the night updating each computer manually, David was able to push the software within 10 minutes of the request. By 9:30 the next morning, all 49 users had the ability to make calls from their laptop. That update, with that timeframe, would’ve been impossible without PDQ’s silent deployment.

Give feedback and get answers (and so much more)

David is a regular participant in the weekly PDQ webinars, and he has found the live interaction to be extremely helpful when trying to glean best practices from other IT professionals.

“I love how PDQ listens to us and discusses new features on the weekly webcast. You just don’t see that with other software companies.”

PDQ’s pre-built packages are also a timesaver. The ability to set each automatic update makes life easy for IT professionals who have to manage their deployment with every update. 

“There are so many things we use — 7-zip, Zoom — that PDQ has already prepackaged. You can set it up automatically. It scans, downloads it, pushes it out. What a timesaver.”

According to David, PDQ saves him “one full day of work every week.” So, how much time do you actually save with PDQ? Download our free trial and check it out for yourself.