How Artisan Equips a Six-Country Company — With a Small IT Team
Artisan at a glance
Artisan is an AI sales platform. Its AI BDR, Ava, runs outbound on autopilot — searching a database of 300 million-plus contacts to find and enrich leads, writing hyper-personalized multi-channel outreach, handling replies and objections, and booking qualified meetings straight into reps' calendars, fully autonomously. Teams using Ava scale their pipeline while freeing reps to focus on building relationships and closing deals.
As Artisan grew, so did its device-management burden. With roughly 30 U.S. employees and an equal number of international contractors spread across India, the UK, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, the full hardware lifecycle — onboarding, deployment, offboarding, and retrieval — fell to its HR team rather than a dedicated IT department. International shipping and customs turned simple retrievals into multi-month ordeals.
GroWrk gave Artisan a single platform and a network of local warehouses to deploy and retrieve devices in the regions where its team actually works — cutting turnaround from months to weeks and freeing the team to focus on higher-value projects.
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Global by design, unequipped by default
Artisan's workforce is global by design: about 30 U.S.-based employees and roughly the same number of contractors across India, the UK, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil. Noah Davis, an HR Specialist who oversees the entire device lifecycle, inherited the job of getting hardware to — and back from — employees in every one of those markets, with no dedicated IT team behind him.
Managing hardware across borders proved slow, manual, and unpredictable:
- Retrieving a single laptop from India once took more than two months, largely because of customs.
- Devices frequently got denied in customs and shipped back to the sender, restarting the process.
- Differing policies and laws in each country made it hard to standardize any workflow.
- The process ran on endless email and messaging back-and-forth — hours of low-level administrative work.
- Shipping devices back to U.S. headquarters was far slower than sourcing or storing them regionally.
"Having such a global workforce, it's hard to streamline a lot of things. There are different policies and laws in different countries that can make things difficult. In one case I'm aware of, it took over two months — especially going through customs was quite a difficult process."
One platform, local warehouses everywhere Artisan hires
Artisan evaluated GroWrk against a couple of competitors it found through its own research, comparing retrieval speed, procurement and deployment ETAs, and pricing. As a fast-moving startup, Artisan chose GroWrk as the best fit for how it operates today — and how it plans to grow.
The decision came down to a few key factors:
- Competitive pricing suited to a growing startup.
- Speed of procurement and deployment across the regions where Artisan hires.
- A global network of local warehouses — including India and the UK — so devices no longer have to travel to and from U.S. headquarters.
- Responsive, hands-on support through a shared Slack channel.
Instead of shipping hardware from the U.S. and fighting customs on every move, Artisan now retrieves devices into nearby warehouses and redeploys them to new hires in the same region. Devices retrieved in India can be reissued to the next India-based hire; the same holds for equipment waiting in the UK warehouse.
"We've retrieved a couple of devices from India since starting with GroWrk and it took only a week or two to get those devices into the warehouse. It is a way better and quicker process than having to ship them all the way back to our headquarters in America."
Weeks, not months — and hours back every day
With GroWrk, Artisan turned a slow, manual, customs-bound process into a fast, repeatable one — without adding IT headcount. Since implementing the platform, Noah and the team have:
- Cut device retrieval from India from more than two months to just one to two weeks.
- Eliminated the need to ship devices back to U.S. headquarters by using local warehouses.
- Reclaimed hours previously lost to customs coordination, emails, and administrative back-and-forth.
- Set up regional redeployment — retrieved devices in India and the UK are reissued to new hires in-region.
- Freed the HR team to focus on higher-value, company-wide projects instead of low-level device logistics.
"It's allowed me to focus on other bigger projects at the company. When we don't have to worry about small things like retrieving or deploying a device because we have a vendor that makes it seamless, it frees me up for the bigger line-item tickets for the rest of the company."
Just as important as the speed is the support behind it. Even while working through an ongoing integration issue, Artisan points to GroWrk's responsiveness as a defining strength of the partnership.
"Responsiveness is the best part of the platform so far. Whenever we've had an issue, everyone in our joint Slack channel is quick to respond. That is one of the biggest points in us staying with GroWrk."
Looking ahead, Artisan plans to keep using GroWrk for procurement, deployment, and retrieval as it continues to scale its global team.
"GroWrk is a huge timesaver when it comes to the retrieval and deployment of devices. I can't believe we went so long without having a vendor to help us with this. I would highly recommend at least trying out GroWrk or having a talk with them."
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