Meet Primo, a French startup that lately raised a $3.4 million funding spherical to construct a software-as-a-service product that handles the IT wants of small and medium firms. Primo retains observe of your fleet of gadgets and might then enable you handle it and not using a devoted IT supervisor.
Headline and World Founders Capital are main the funding spherical, with a number of enterprise angels additionally collaborating, similar to Arthur Waller, Romain Niccoli, Ilana Elbaz, Josef Bovet, Mathieu Birach and Romain Libeau.
Small firms normally don’t have a devoted IT crew. They have an inclination to rent their first IT supervisor after they attain 200 or 300 staff. Earlier than that, it’s a multitude. Some folks within the crew are “fairly good with computer systems” and might repair minor points. For heavy-duty duties, firms typically depend on outsourced IT.
When there’s a brand new rent, somebody from the HR or admin groups will guarantee that the brand new worker has the whole lot they should get began. It typically entails ordering a brand new pc, including a reference quantity to a spreadsheet, emailing the outsourced IT particular person in order that they will grant entry to inner instruments, and so forth.
“The complexity of IT has fully modified — it has change into operational. When somebody joins the crew, there are 35 duties to do,” Primo co-founder and CEO Martin Pannier informed me. It’s a time-consuming course of and likelihood is the duty checklist isn’t even updated.
An IT companion
Primo needs to be the companion SaaS for small firms. It presently has 4 completely different modules that ought to velocity up and rationalize IT duties.
“Everybody has change into an unintended IT supervisor. It has a variety of benefits. One, it’s free. Two, it’s tremendous agile and responsive,” Pannier stated.
First, Primo can simplify how your organization manages laptops and different gadgets. As a substitute of ordering from completely different web sites and manually conserving observe of gadgets in a spreadsheet, Primo customers can order new laptops from Primo’s dashboard.
As Primo is related to a number of HR info programs, it’s straightforward to see which laptop computer belongs to which worker. This module is free and acts as the highest of the funnel in the case of buyer acquisition for the SaaS platform. Primo clients pay the retail value for brand spanking new laptops whereas the startup takes a minimize due to wholesale pricing.
Second, Primo helps you handle gadgets remotely. For this module, the corporate works with Hexnode, a cell gadget administration (MDM) firm. However as a substitute of showcasing a ton of choices to the tip clients, Primo is specializing in the wants of small firms.
The default configuration is already fairly opinionated and will cowl the overwhelming majority of use instances. The laptop computer show is locked after 5 minutes, native storage is encrypted by default, automated updates are enabled, and so forth. Clients may use Primo’s MDM module to deploy apps on the workers’ laptops.
Picture Credit: Primo
Third, Primo has a safety module with Subsequent-Era Antivirus options (NGAV) and end-point detection and response (EDR). As soon as once more, the corporate is partnering with one other firm to convey these options.
Lastly, Primo additionally affords help options. In that case, if an worker has an issue as a result of they spilled some water or their laptop computer acquired stolen, Primo handles all repairs and replacements with next-day loaner gadgets and a few insurance coverage protection.
Up subsequent, the startup needs to deal with software program IT. Massive firms typically depend on an id and entry administration product like Okta to guarantee that all people has entry to the appropriate instruments — and that former staff can’t entry Slack anymore.
But it surely’s extraordinarily advanced to implement. “Okta addresses firms from 250 to 300,000 staff. However 99% of their efforts go in direction of the 5,000 to 300,000 phase,” Pannier stated.
Some firms depend on Google’s single sign-on function. However that requires some improvement and handbook configuration. As a substitute, Primo goes to depend on Auth0 (an organization that was acquired by Okta) for his or her entry administration merchandise. However that’s not dwell simply but.
Primarily, Primo is a part of this new pattern of SaaS startups that bundle a bunch of merchandise in the identical platform. The concept is that issues ought to be straightforward and easy for small firms. They don’t need to take care of 4 completely different distributors if an organization can already cowl 95% of their wants.
Picture Credit: Primo