The Business Outcomes
- Rohrig experienced a maximum two hours downtime per year over the last 4 years.
- Increased systems reliability and stability has allowed Rohrig to meet tighter deadlines from customers.
- Rohrig have been able to reduce their annual IT spend and plan and budget effectively for their IT expenditure.
- Construction site staff have been able to access critical IT systems enabling better efficiency.
- Rohrig management team members are no longer stressed or frustrated by IT challenges.
- The management team has been able to focus on building on the technology and look towards improving processes and new technologies rather than constantly worrying about IT-related issues and outages.
The Challenge
Rohrig were experiencing considerable reliability problems with their IT systems, particularly around email and performance. Downtime had blown out to several hours per week and this was having a direct impact on their ability to quote new projects, manage existing projects and communicate with customers and suppliers.
They released a competitive tender, which outlined their need for on-going support, and invited several local IT support businesses to submit proposals. Surety IT was one of those companies.
Before we submitted any recommendations or a proposal, we needed to get a clear understanding of the issues Rohrig were facing and the business outcomes they needed. We arranged a site visit, spoke to the relevant stakeholders in the business and performed a health-check of their IT systems.
We discovered that they were dealing with the following major challenges:
- the unreliability of the Windows servers and network was leading to approximately 3-4 hours of downtime a week which was in turn impacting productivity and profitability.
- The servers were custom built and had run out of warranty so any failures were being extended by the inability of the existing IT provider to source parts.
- Email was very unreliable and was causing daily outages leading to missed tender submissions and delays to customers.
- Backups were not working successfully.
- There was a major problem with SPAM emails which was impacting staff productivity.
Rohrig selected our proposal and our recommendations after careful consideration with the main reason being we were the only IT provider to consider the business outcomes.
The Solution
To address the challenges and issues, we implemented our solutions path, which is a proven process of insight and action: understand, plan, build, maintain, enhance.
We took a very collaborative and consultative approach and clearly understood the issues and challenges that Rohrig were facing. We spent considerable time identifying what the challenges were and what desired business outcomes Rohrig wanted.
Key aspects of the overall solution were –
- We provided a tailored IT strategy and IT road map that detailed agreed upon priorities, budgets, timescales and responsibilities over a 3 year period.
- A hybrid solution with a mix of in-house and cloud based solutions.
- Improved security around critical information assets and IT systems.
- Assistance and guidance around the implementation of their planned project management solution.
- Improved connectivity between sites, allowing staff to securely access information easily and in a timely manner.
- Enabled the business to become more mobile on construction sites and whilst travelling.
- Provided a tailored support solution that catered for Rohrig’s unique needs including on-site support twice a week.
- Fully documented Rohrig’s IT infrastructure and made the documentation available for the business.
- Are still the ‘one number to call’ for the business in terms of IT support for third party applications.
- Have continued to work in collaboration with Rohrig stakeholders to re-visit the IT strategy, develop it and further refine it as the business move forward and continues to evolve and grow.
Surety IT provide a quick response with good customer service.
Jason comes up with ideas on how to take our business further to help fulfill our needs as well as the business in the future as well.”
Edina Hamidovic – Accounts Manager, Rohrig