Keywords Studios

How a 500+ employee company in the video game industry uses Reftab to track assets globally

About Keywords Studios

Keywords Studios is located across 23 countries, spanning 5 continents. They are a leading external developmental partner for major international video game companies.

Challenge

Marc-Andre Cormier, IT Support Supervisor at Keywords Studios – Montreal, had a problem.

He and his team were currently managing all of the company’s equipment, maintenance/support requests, and user account creation via a homegrown Excel system. They needed a true multi-tenancy environment to track assets globally, and it was clear that they outgrew their makeshift solution. It involved too much manual work, and his team couldn’t keep up. These issues only got worse when most of the team started working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“It was very basic, we had a list of hardware separated in multiple tabs. And then, in these tabs, we would have all the basic information to track, like serial numbers and important product information. Finally, we would have a calendar tab. On that calendar tab, we would track where or which project in the studio was going to be using the hardware at a given time.”

This system put him and his team in untenable situations.

“For example, let’s say we had an iPhone X, and then that iPhone X, we know what’s being used by project A throughout March and then project B in April and then no project in May. So, there’s no project in May, we can allocate it to a new project, or it’s going to be on the shelf during those times. It was very basic tracking to a calendar in Excel.”

Solution

He knew there had to be a better system but was frustrated by all of the sales-driven solutions he came across that made it easy to track hardware but lacked an elegant solution for checking it in and out.

That is until he discovered Reftab in early 2020.

“Reftab saved us more than 50% of our tracking time for hardware.”

For example…

“Most of the time (pre-Reftab), we would have a general idea of where our hardware was located within our office space, but that tracking was limited because otherwise, it would be very time-consuming. And so, when we found Reftab, it allowed us to increase the tracking and save a lot of time doing so.”

In addition to saving time, he is also now saving money since he now has better processes in place for assigning equipment, tracking maintenance requests as well as smaller, essential accessories (like webcams and keyboards), which they weren’t tracking before.

“Reftab allowed us to quickly and easily assign equipment to every single desk in our offices. It updates our information about the hardware in one easy centralized location.”

Given the nature of the business, they have a lot of quick-turnaround projects with custom equipment needs. Reftab makes it easier to turn this chaos into a streamlined, manageable process.

“We use Reftab on the day-to-day to track our equipment. We do have projects coming in for very short periods at a time. And so, every project requires different sets of hardware, whether it’s video game consoles, mobile devices, or specific types of computers. When it comes to Reftab, what we do is make sure that we track all our hardware, what is available, and where it is in the offices because we have several offices in multiple cities. Using Reftab, we track who is currently using our hardware when it was allocated and the amount of hardware that’s available. So whenever there are projections for new projects coming in, we also have an idea if we have enough hardware or we need to order ahead of time.”

They also use Reftab’s license feature.

“We started using their license feature, which now allows us to track licenses assigned to people. Obviously, with the pandemic, things changed, we had to accommodate for work from home, and at that point, it quickly evolved into tracking the hardware at every employee’s house. And so it’s moved quickly from a local initiative to help tracking hardware to a very global initiative for our company.”

Rolling out Reftab to all of their studios

In fact, Marc-Andre was so pleased with how smooth the transition to Reftab was that he couldn’t help but evangelize it to Keywords Studios’ other offices.

“Originally, Reftab was expected to be a local initiative for our Montreal studio. Even within our Montreal studios, we are in two different buildings, and we have six different wings. It was a local effort to really start tracking the hardware in that location because of a lot of equipment movement, and it quickly appealed to all of our other studios in North America. They quickly went and saw the interest of having that system, and then finally, our global studios decided that this was going to become our new global asset tracking because of the convenience, because of how efficient it is, and because the trial worked very well in Montreal.”

This means they now have an active directory system for all of their employees and equipment across all of their studios in one centralized location.

“Each studio has a few unique ways of tracking equipment, but Reftab allows that flexibility that we are able to track equipment in one way in Montreal, and these slight variations are still accommodated, for example, in Tokyo.”

Reftab excels in flexibility.

“… in Japan, we have a different way of assigning equipment to a project versus in Montreal, wherein Montreal will assign to individuals, or the team leads for a project, and in Tokyo, the IT team is able to create a group of assets that they assigned to a specific project email address and so multiple people in that project will receive those notifications. And the project is held accountable rather than the leadership of that project, which still allowed us to work both ways.”

Reftab as a partner

Given how much Reftab has helped him in his role, Marc-Andre doesn’t hesitate to recommend Reftab to other IT support supervisors.

“There are only upsides for us for Reftab. It’s been working well for everything. And, the team at Reftab has been super nice, responsive, and helpful for us.”