Case Study: A National Warehouse Distributor
NexusTek helped a National Warehouse Distributor to modernize their IT infrastructure, strengthen their security posture against growing cyber threats, and support their IT operations and employees with managed IT services.
Solutions Benefits
Modernized their IT systems, allowing greater collaboration and procedural standardization across employees in warehouse and office locations
Strengthened their cybersecurity posture, protecting warehouse inventory data, dealer and supplier data, customer data, and employee data
Optimized their IT operations to improve distribution efficiency and warehouse management
Standardized their IT across all office and warehouse locations
Business Need
Within the last five years, a private equity firm invested in the national warehouse distributing company, and thereafter, the company acquired two additional locations. Following this growth, the company identified the need for an evaluation of the IT environments in their recent acquisitions as well as an assessment of their business, as a whole. Although they had a working IT infrastructure, they recognized the possibility that there might be gaps in their IT that could have implications for warehouse and distribution performance as well as security. Their 24/7 online ordering system and nextday delivery system are key customer benefits that rely heavily upon reliable, secure IT system functionality.
Their two new acquisitions also presented unknowns in terms of their IT environments, which the company needed to understand more thoroughly to manage effectively. The company recognized that a modern, standardized IT system was integral to delivering on their mission to provide customer-centered service. To function optimally as a cohesive whole, they needed a secure, consistent IT environment throughout the company.
Solution
This customer had partnered with NexusTek since 2014 for hosted infrastructure, Firewall-as-a-Service, and data backup services. Because of their positive working relationship, they selected NexusTek to provide the in-depth IT assessment they needed to advance and secure their growing business. NexusTek’s Virtual CIO (vCIO) services offer technology leadership in the form of consultation and recommendations, which was the perfect complement to their own in-house IT team. Through an in-depth, multi-method approach, NexusTek’s vCIO completed a holistic assessment of the customer’s IT infrastructure, including elements related to strategy, operations, security, resilience, and infrastructure health. The vCIO assessment revealed a need for modernization, more comprehensive cybersecurity services, and a hardware refresh. Managed IT services were also recommended as a counterpart to the company’s in-house IT team, to ensure that their systems continue running smoothly with 24/7/365 support.
NexusTek’s vCIO presented the findings of the IT infrastructure assessment to the customer in a report that included findings, quantified scores of relevant measures, risk analysis, and recommendations to remediate issues along with roadmaps, timelines, resources, and budgets for each. The vCIO reviewed the findings of the assessment with the customer, ensuring that any questions they had were answered.
Results
After receiving the vCIO assessment findings and recommendations, the customer chose to partner with NexusTek for comprehensive IT services that were standardized and easily scalable to new office and warehouse locations as they continue to expand across the U.S. NexusTek deployed Microsoft 365 across all locations, providing the customer’s employees access to a host of productivity applications, including Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. NexusTek continued to provide cloud-hosted infrastructure to support a legacy Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) platform that is integral to the customer’s operations, adding cybersecurity and managed IT services. With NexusTek’s Advanced Cybersecurity plan, the customer added multiple layers of protection that safeguard their users, data, and applications. The addition of Remote Managed IT Services gives them 24/7/365 support, maintenance, and troubleshooting for their cloud-based infrastructure at any location where assistance is needed.
Not only did NexusTek solutions create the consistent IT environment the customer was seeking, but they also created a shared platform for collaboration and document storage across all warehouse and office locations, which facilitates standardization of operations. Modernizing and securing the customer’s IT systems also enhanced the company’s capabilities related to warehouse and distribution efficiency, which is essential to delivering desired products to customers on the timeline they need.
As a final note, the private equity firm managing the company was so impressed with the outcomes of the vCIO assessment that they are now using the holistic IT solution NexusTek proposed as a model for standardizing all of their businesses, including the holding company itself. NexusTek not only provided gap analysis, but also set the standard for IT for all of this private equity firm’s companies.
This case study was prepared with the customer’s full knowledge and involvement. To respect the customer’s privacy, we have omitted their name, logo, and any other identifying information.
