Establishing a Brand-New IT Department and Infrastructure for Alliance Residential Company

"We work with the C1 team every day, and we’re beyond happy about how cooperative and capable they are—they’re truly experts at what they’re doing, and they’re so easy to work with.”

Sherida Colvin | Senior VP of Associate Engagement/In-House Counsel, Alliance Residential Company  

The Challenge:

Rebuilding Internal Support: Establishing a Robust IT Infrastructure Post-Division Sale   

Alliance Residential Company needed to rebuild many of its internal corporate support departments, including the IT department, after its sale of its management division. 

Sherida Colvin, Senior VP of Associate Engagement/In-House Counsel at Alliance Residential Company, knew that establishing a strong infrastructure would provide the company with the foundation it needed to succeed. However, it quickly became apparent to Colvin that Alliance Residential needed an external resource—and a true partner—to establish a best-in-class IT department and infrastructure.  

“We needed a solid foundation to lead this company into the future,” said Colvin. Instead of a “set it and forget” approach to IT, Colvin knew that “in order to be successful, we needed to invest more resources and attention into IT, because otherwise how are we going to communicate effectively? I took this project on because I knew it was so important to have IT systems that are seamless and extremely user friendly so that they can effectively support these extraordinary multifamily projects.”  

As the handover to the new organization took place, Alliance Residential placed a high priority on security. Not only did Colvin and her team have to keep a constant watch on security measures, but they also had to manage a brand-new organizational structure in a new corporate environment.  

“The work and effort it took to decouple the management division from the remaining development division was significant. It would have almost been better if we were fully starting from scratch, because we were unwinding a whole lot of legacy assets—and trying to do so with limited resources and many different competing priorities on all stakeholders,” recalled Colvin.  

Colvin knew that Alliance Residential had to work quickly to build a new, up-to-date infrastructure that would be both user-friendly and secure. 

The Solution:

Empowering Alliance Residential with a Comprehensive IT Solution   

C1 was brought on-board as a partner to aid in establishing an effective IT department. This involved building a roadmap that laid out what needed to be done, what the timeline would look like, what the benefits and consequences would be, and how every aspect of the implementation would be executed.  

The solution involved a move to the cloud, with an implementation of the full Microsoft 365 suite and a Cisco Meraki network. This allowed Alliance Residential to have a centralized infrastructure with dashboards for added visibility, the ability to provide the internal team with a standard research platform, and streamlined products and resources for its customers. The solution was fully implemented and managed by C1.  

“We’re now comfortable and confident in the resources that we have, our process for troubleshooting issues, our centralized location for documents, and our access to critical information,” said Colvin. “We’re empowering our team members to make smart and secure decisions.”

The Result:

Enhanced Security and Strategic Focus through Managed IT Services        

The added security features have exponentially decreased the potential threats Alliance Residential encounters on a daily basis. “That is a huge win in our mind, and it shows the value of putting additional security measures in place,” said Colvin. “Before, the team had to research every single one of those threats, so we’re saving hours each day on investigating these things.”  

Additionally, the managed services partnership with C1 has been very beneficial for Alliance Residential, as it is able to leverage C1’s industry-standard knowledge and explore innovative solutions and resources. “The shining star is our partnership with C1 for managed services,” said Colvin. “We work with the C1 team every day, and we’re beyond happy about how cooperative and capable they are—they’re truly experts at what they’re doing, and they’re so easy to work with. They’re always bringing new solutions and options to the table that we’d otherwise never know about.”  

The new systems have also allowed the Alliance Residential team to focus on strategic priorities rather than struggling with technology. “The best impact is that there wasn’t much impact to the vast majority of our associates—except that they have multi-factor authentication and they just go to SharePoint for documents. There was minimal change or impact to our workforce,” said Colvin. “We know that we’re providing them a better, more secure, more user-friendly resource, but in their minds, they just need to have quick, easy access to stuff. Now they do, and that’s a big win.”  

C1 and Alliance Residential plan to continue the partnership by helping the team members gain knowledge of all the features of the new platform in order to utilize it to its full potential and create better experiences both internally and externally.