AlphaCE

Job placement business gets GDPR compliant with 

ShareFile makes it easy and secure for Swedish job coaching and education company AlphaCE employees to access and share confidential files from any location

Working in partnership with Sweden’s unemployment service, AlphaCE helped almost 2000 long-term unemployed people into work last year.

“It’s like a mission,” IT Manager Henrik Hellerstedt says. “When people are far away from getting work, we help them. It’s rewarding to see how many people we can help get jobs.”

AlphaCE’s 200 employees work from 45 locations across Sweden, providing coaching, education and job prospects. Staff frequently move between offices within each region and require secure access to confidential, personal information wherever they are. Not only that, but staff need to safely share those files with unemployment offices, prospective employers and providers of training internships.

Hellerstedt heads up an IT team of only three.

“It’s a small department,” he explains, “which means we have to pick the right tools. We are 100 percent cloud-based because we don’t have the time to manage infrastructure ourselves.”

The last piece of infrastructure to upgrade was AlphaCE’s system for storing and sharing files.

“It was a very old solution from when [the company employed] just 10 people, and it was embedded in the business,” Hellerstedt explains. “People had used it so long they were afraid of change.”

But the system presented major challenges.

“We didn’t feel we had control of security. There was no reporting, and we had no way of knowing who had access to what. Also, we had outgrown the system, so people created their own workarounds — saving files locally, using USB sticks and consumer cloud storage services, and sending sensitive files by email. We knew we needed to change,” Hellerstedt says, adding that the deadline for GDPR compliance further motivated the change.

AlphaCE’s strategic IT partner, Platinum Citrix Solution Advisor and Citrix Service Provider Atea, recommended ShareFile to help Hellerstedt and his team.

“Our employees really trust the system, now. They feel secure”

ShareFile helps AlphaCE with GDPR compliance because, as Hellerstedt explains, “Our employees really trust the ShareFile system and know information will always be there when they need it. They feel secure. And if they feel secure, they are more likely to use it, which means we have better control over sensitive data.”

With ShareFile, staff can collaborate between offices and with partner organisations, sharing files without compromising security. Files are encrypted in transit and when stored, and easy external sharing means no more email attachments.

Ease of use drives adoption, too

Hellerstedt knew that ease of use would be essential to employee adoption.

“There are a lot of GDPR-compliant systems available,” he says, “but if they are not easy to use, staff will use something else, no matter what the IT department says.”

ShareFile offers single sign-on within AlphaCE’s systems and integrates seamlessly with Office 365 on all devices, including laptops and mobile phones.

A security improvement that boosts productivity

Wherever they are, people can securely access the information they need, and with Office 365, they can easily edit documents on their phones. AlphaCE’s contract-tendering team uses ShareFile to co-edit bid documents with colleagues in different offices.

As Hellerstedt says, “ShareFile has simplified employees’ day-to-day work massively. It’s faster than our previous solution, it’s easier to use, and the biggest benefit is that people actually use it. I don’t know how we managed without it.”

Employees are already benefiting from higher productivity.