Case Study

The Challenge

Greene Espel’s business needs had created a growing list of projects for their IT department.

“We had a log jam of projects, and I was the bottleneck on a lot of these things,” said Ryan Helmer, IT Manager at Greene Espel. “I needed to find help, but I wanted to find help in a way that was going to fit our business best.”

They discussed whether they should hire a new IT professional or seek outside IT consulting help. Past experiences with consultants resulted in them wanting to sell their solution, whether it was the right fit for Greene Espel or not.

Greene Espel knew there wasn't much continuity between their IT projects, so they wanted to enlist help that knew their business and knew the legal industry well. They wanted someone to whom they could be comfortable handing projects, and trust to do them right.

“Finding somebody like that is really tough,” Helmer said. “For me, what it boils down to is I need somebody that I don't have to hold their hand every step of the way."

Greene Espel knew they did not need managed IT services, and they didn’t need a help desk to take over their IT operations. The internal IT team could handle those tasks. Instead, Greene Espel needed a customized IT solution to provide IT expertise and help complete projects.

The Solution

Greene Espel had already been using Loffler’s services for facilities management and copier support. After talking to their Loffler account managers, they discovered a customized solution through Loffler's IT Solutions Group that would allow for an on-site consulting arrangement.

Helmer met with Loffler’s engineers to understand the IT consulting possibilities and determined Loffler was a natural fit for Greene Espel’s IT team.

"I'm pretty particular about how I want things done," Helmer said. "Having somebody that could speak to that and say, ‘Yes, we have a way of meeting that need for you,’ was extremely appealing for us.”

Now, an IT professional is on-site at Greene Espel two full days each week. Greene Espel’s customized IT solution is managed under the Loffler umbrella, along with their facilities management and copier services.

The Results

So far in their consulting relationship, Loffler has helped Greene Espel with an IP phone rollout, networking changes, core switching, edge switching, server and Active Directory upgrades, a new client rollout and setting up laptop images.

“I'm not the sole bottleneck on projects getting done and that's been a huge relief,” Helmer said. “It clears the logjam on some of these things that have been on the back burner and I've wanted to get to, but just haven't had enough capacity.”

With Loffler’s IT solution, Greene Espel now has a technology partner they can rely on when their systems have issues.

“We have somebody who knows our environment and knows the needs of the business and the different needs of even just the people, the individuals,” Helmer said. “It's really great to have somebody who is essentially like an employee of your own.”

In addition to the weekly IT project work Loffler provides, the IT experts at Loffler provide a backup for the Greene Espel team when projects become more complex.

Greene Espel’s initial caution in dealing with an outside consultant came from their experience in asking other companies for an IT solution, only to hear an old, antiquated recommendation for specific products that vendor needed to sell.