Improving Digital Experiences for YMCA Members and Employees

Founded over 163 years ago, the YMCA (also known as "the Y") is a global organization that offers community programs to foster a healthy spirit, mind and body for all. The YMCA operates as a distributed franchise, which includes 870+ associations across North America. The YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities is one part of the wider YMCA franchise, and it is the third largest franchise within the network. It serves communities in the greater Twin Cities metro region, southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin across 29 locations and program sites, 8 overnight camps, 10 day camps and more than 90 child care sites. The organization decided to shift its architecture to a cloud-based environment, leveraging solutions like Microsoft Azure, Office 365 as well as a SaaS- based HR solution. It also moved to an SD-WAN approach for branch office connectivity. Its IT team needed insight across endpoints, Wi-Fi, internal network and its SaaS providers to highlight potential issues before they impact its users' experience. ThousandEyes provided rapid visibility into the Y's environment through endpoint and cloud agents. Greater visibility has helped improve IT performance and has resulted in positive digital experiences for YMCA members and employees alike. Tom Case, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities explains, "The kind of response we're getting back from members and employees compared to before is night-and-day—we get really positive feedback about the experience from employees and members. It is already much better than we used to get. It's a pure relief that people don't need to connect laptops and get assistance from us that they need. We can focus on the users' overall experiences versus having to focus on tech at a branch level."

Founded over 163 years ago, the YMCA (also known as "the Y") is a global organization that offers community programs to foster a healthy spirit, mind and body for all. The YMCA operates as a distributed franchise, which includes 870+ associations across North America. The YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities is one part of the wider YMCA franchise, and it is the third largest franchise within the network. It serves communities in the greater Twin Cities metro region, southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin across 29 locations and program sites, 8 overnight camps, 10 day camps and more than 90 child care sites. The organization decided to shift its architecture to a cloud-based environment, leveraging solutions like Microsoft Azure, Office 365 as well as a SaaS- based HR solution. It also moved to an SD-WAN approach for branch office connectivity. Its IT team needed insight across endpoints, Wi-Fi, internal network and its SaaS providers to highlight potential issues before they impact its users' experience. ThousandEyes provided rapid visibility into the Y's environment through endpoint and cloud agents. Greater visibility has helped improve IT performance and has resulted in positive digital experiences for YMCA members and employees alike. Tom Case, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities explains, "The kind of response we're getting back from members and employees compared to before is night-and-day—we get really positive feedback about the experience from employees and members. It is already much better than we used to get. It's a pure relief that people don't need to connect laptops and get assistance from us that they need. We can focus on the users' overall experiences versus having to focus on tech at a branch level."