Challenges

With a massively distributed team, spread across 21 offices, Alta Planning + Design needed the capability to build the best team for every project, without being limited by geographic boundaries. It wasn’t unusual for individuals across the US, Canada, and Asia with specific skill sets to collaborate on projects.

But, to be productive, remote teams needed to collaborate on the same files and data, such as project plans, large CAD files, and drone imagery, at the same time. And their existing infrastructure was impeding, rather than supporting, cross-site working.

The files people needed were siloed and scattered across a conglomeration of different servers and legacy Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, all with different permission and access capabilities. This meant that even finding and accessing the files they needed was a manual chore, taking up critical time when they could have been working.

When users created or revised a file, problems mounted. With no central control or governance of content, users could unknowingly work on an outdated or duplicate file, or overwrite a colleagues’ work if two people were in a file simultaneously. This meant additional wasted hours, less productivity, and more frustration for everyone.

If someone accidentally deleted a file, there was no easy way to recover it, without waiting helplessly for individual vendors who developed the file in the first place to fix the issue.

Sharing files was yet another headache. Often, Alta’s project team needed to move the latest plans and 3D models from one server to another, but slow transfers wasted valuable project time. And when the user receiving the file had low bandwidth, the wait was even longer. Sometimes, files would be corrupted and they would have to start over.

Alta’s small IT team was also feeling the pain. With systems so disconnected, they had no central oversight on who was accessing what data, making the job of data protection, compliance and threat prevention virtually impossible.

Plus, they were spending so much time assisting with issues like data access and storage, that they had less hours in the day to ensure valuable intellectual property wasn’t getting into the wrong hands.

Alta urgently needed a consolidated platform that would improve visibility, collaboration, and content control across every project. A solution that would boost the speed and quality of projects—and create even more customer satisfaction.

Solutions

Deploying Egnyte, where every file can be identified and controlled, so users can securely access any content, anywhere, on any device.

Alta evaluated 11 potential solutions and quickly shortlisted three. They loved Egnyte, but had one issue; the platform didn’t have a ‘sync timer’ to show how long data migrations would take. As soon as they raised it, Egnyte responded, and engineered the exact tool they needed in days!

This extra layer of attention and customer care left a lasting impression and Alta knew Egnyte was the partner for them.

Thanks to Egnyte’s hands-on training and support, Alta migrated all 21 offices and 225 people from their cumbersome file infrastructure into Egnyte, creating a single source of truth in just two months.

Alta was already using tools such as GIS, AutoCad and Adobe Creative Suite and Egnyte seamlessly integrated with those existing investments. This safeguarded the flow of content across every app Alta uses.

Alta also quickly migrated every previously disconnected file into Egnyte’s platform, including from their legacy NAS devices, meaning all their content now lived in one place—Egnyte.

Suddenly, the security and control of content became simple and seamless for Alta’s IT team. With all valuable intellectual property now centralized in a single location they could keep content secure and correct permission and access issues in just a few clicks.

Meanwhile, employees could finally collaborate without friction, finding any resource they needed in seconds. And because Egnyte automatically syncs updated files in the background, users were always accessing the latest information—a critical requirement for effective collaboration and productive projects.

With Egnyte, users could also collaborate on projects globally with ease. Regardless of their geographic location, or the device or infrastructure they were using, team members could work on the same documents.

The platform also eliminated the problem of duplicating or overwriting work and made the frustration of deleted files a thing of the past, with the platform empowering users to retrieve lost information for themselves.

All the friction between collaborators that had been caused by poor connectivity and lack of access was gone—making key workflows instantly more streamlined and efficient.

Results

$220k+ saved every year and projects delivered 10% more efficiently.

Because Egynte reduces data access times so dramatically company-wide, the average billable user saves at least 30 minutes a day because they are no longer hunting for files. This saves the business approximately $91k a year.

The efficiencies they gain in collaborating and co-editing saves an additional 15 minutes a day per user, adding another $45k in savings.

Those 45 minutes a day of combined time savings enable Alta’s teams to work more quickly and effectively, and deliver projects 10% more efficiently.

Alta also significantly reduces its technical support costs thanks to Egnyte. For example, by consolidating all their storage into the platform, they reduce the IT management costs associated with multiple data silos by $81.5k a year. The business also eliminates support costs for Network Attached Storage devices (NASs) throughout Alta, saving a further $3.2k per year.

Meanwhile, the IT team has cut the time it spends on manual chores like managing and fixing issues, or assisting access, by 40%. With all data now stored within Egnyte, the IT team has reduced the number of backup methods and protocols from six to three. All of this equates to considerable time and resources back in their schedule to focus on more innovative projects, while Egnyte takes care of improving data visibility and control, while mitigating data risks for them.

Challenge

Kinetix was increasingly focused on high-growth biotechs in the life sciences marketplace, who needed a compliant, unified way to manage, secure, and validate all their data and automate the heavy workload of meeting regulatory compliance. However, Kinetix found many of the solutions provided by the market’s big players to be lacking in terms of security, governance, support, and the functionality required to meet clients’ large-scale data management needs.

Solution

Egnyte for Life Sciences changed everything in a very positive way. The unified data management platform enabled visibility and control of all clients’ data and documents, while a host of smart automation streamlined the job of maintaining compliance. Internal employees and external partners could collaborate on large file sets securely and quickly, threats were constantly monitored, valuable information was protected, and regulated documents were created and deployed to mitigate risk.

Results

Egnyte enabled Kinetix to solve its clients’ data governance issues for good, in turn increasing yearly revenue by $300k. After implementing Egnyte, clients have close to 0% disruption across their file share infrastructure, making it an efficient and profitable product for Kinetix to manage. Clients love Egnyte, too, because it helps them remain compliant, cuts costs, increases productivity, and helps them stay focused on delivering life-changing drug therapies and devices. Egnyte’s tailored, five-star customer care provides the cherry on the cake in a fantastic partnership.

Overview

In a competitive real estate development space, Lewis Group needed to maximize the productivity of its teams. Yet its existing file management infrastructure was slowing everyone down: it didn’t offer remote access to the files teams needed and when they were in the office, locating, moving, and syncing files was seriously sluggish.

Everything changed when Egnyte came onboard. With every file now easily accessed from a single platform and secure remote access made simple, productivity skyrocketed, projects accelerated, and direct costs fell by 66%.

Challenges

Lewis Group’s employees needed fast access to critical files, such as architectural plans and project documentation. Unfortunately, their existing file management system provided no remote access, so unless they were in the office, they couldn’t access, share, or collaborate on essential content. Even when they were at their desks, locating files on the network, moving large files around, and syncing were all agonisingly slow.

Solution

With Egnyte onboard, remote and office-based users can easily access and collaborate on files of any size, on any device, even when they’re offline, which improves productivity and relationships with clients and vendors. Egnyte’s central hub of visibility and control also eliminates the frustrations of backend file administration for IT.

Results

Switching to Egnyte has cut Lewis Group’s direct costs by 66%. And with 600 staff saving at least 30 minutes a day with Egnyte, Lewis Group has unlocked an incredible 300hrs of extra capacity across the business daily!

Challenges

As Les Mills expanded into cities in Asia, Europe, North and South America, Mike Mason, Global Infrastructure Tech Lead, found himself regularly traveling the world standing up Exchange servers, file servers, backup and recovery systems, and VPNs to support the collaboration needs of its distributed workforce.

Solution

Mason decided to bring a cloud-first approach to Les Mills and its file services. He rolled out Egnyte globally in 2014, established a single source of truth and consolidated multiple content repositories into a centralized, flexible, and secure cloud environment. In 2020, with team members working from home, Les Mills brought more workout content online and shifted focus to the on-demand side of the business to meet customer needs.

Results

• Les Mills needed to very quickly shift focus, reduce operating costs and focus on the areas of the business that would lessen the impacts of Covid-19.
• Les Mills has about 100TB of data and took quick advantage of Egnyte’s AI-powered lifecycle management capabilities to identify 1.6M duplicate files across their environment.
• To solve this growth in storage, they have created retention, archive, and deletion policies that lowered storage costs and reduced risk exposure.

Robins & Morton is committed to continuous improvement in everything they do.

This philosophy has helped the construction firm founded in 1946 become one of the leading specialist builders of new hospitals and healthcare facilities in the United States today, completing more than 1,700 successful projects across 38 states. These projects have spanned from the Miami Beach Convention Center Alternate Care Facility built during the pandemic, to the Fort Hood Intrepid Spirit Center which serves up to 1,000 service members annually.

Continuous improvement is also one of the guiding principles behind the Building Forward® initiative, an innovative approach within Robins & Morton that empowers project teams to share ideas and process feedback throughout the planning, design, and construction project phases.

As construction projects have become more complicated and complex across more locations, Robins & Morton is improving how its office and field-based project-teams access, share, and collaborate on project files to run smarter, more efficient projects. This was the impetus for integrating its construction project management system, Procore, with Egnyte.

Challenge

Managing 160 projects across 16 states, Director of Corporate and Operational Technology, David Pratt, is always looking to reduce inefficiencies for the architects, sub-contractors, and client representatives working on projects.

Procore is used by project teams to coordinate and track each step of the construction process. In addition to managing real-time scheduling and project tasks, it is used to capture daily progress reports and plan reviews.

All company and project-related documents, from contracts and photos to CAD drawings and large digital AR/VR files are stored within Egnyte’s cloud-based file-sharing platform, making it easy for field-based teams, to securely access and collaborate on files regardless of where they are located, or what device they are using.

With so many active projects, Pratt needed to ensure that both Procore and Egnyte were always aligned and updated for project teams to easily locate files on the Procore Project page, eliminating the need for users to navigate two systems or juggle multiple permissions.

Solution

By using Egnyte’s native platform integration with Procore, project teams now have a single source of content truth, to access, share and collaborate on key project documents, simplifying the experience for users and IT administration alike.

“When a new construction project begins, IT simply creates a new job project in Procore, defines the access rights of all team members – which will include clients and trade partners – and then identify which content in Egnyte we want to securely share with whom,” Pratt said.

A two-way automatic sync between Egnyte and Procore eliminates the need for manual intervention, allowing users to easily upload new project documents to Procore, which are then automatically saved to Egnyte.

“The integration of Egnyte and Procore has been positively received by all. At a stroke it has eliminated the challenges we had in the field with data storage and archiving project documentation,” said Pratt. “Plus, integrating the two environments has boosted our ability to efficiently spin up new projects and interact with partners through planning, design and construction.”

Results

With a seamless integration in place, Robins & Morton has streamlined how it provides all stakeholders access to documentation for the duration of a project, generating significant productivity gains across project sites.

This proved particularly transformational when COVID-19 hit.

“We had to innovate fast to ensure that work on urgent healthcare and emergency Covid-19 facilities could continue,’ said Pratt. ‘That meant finding new ways to document job site progress and share this with partners and clients so we could work together faster. Thanks to the Egnyte and Procore integration, we were able to do this efficiently.”

The integration made it safer and easier for clients to visualize and manage projects, allowing Robins & Morton to unleash truly ground-breaking operational innovations across its project sites. This included the creation of BIM caves where clients could immerse themselves in VR models, gain a 360° perspective of future development and make construction decisions faster.

Project teams securely shared photos with stakeholders to document progress at construction sites, ensuring that approvals and decision-making processes were not impeded by physical access restrictions.

With a culture that embraces continuous improvement and innovative technology partners working together to solve complex construction challenges, Robins & Morton is delivering on its mission to make a lasting impact on the people and companies it partners with.

Solving complex challenges on aggressive timelines is in the DNA of Alberici Corporation, a diversified construction company that works in industrial and commercial markets globally.

When longtime client General Motors Company called on Alberici for an urgent design-build request to transform an 86,000 square-foot warehouse into an emergency ventilator manufacturing facility during the COVID-19 pandemic, they answered the call. Within just two weeks, the transformed facility produced its first ventilator and, within a month, it was making 500 life-saving devices a day.

Drawing on their more than 100-years of experience successfully completing complex projects like the largest hydroelectric plant on the Ohio River, automotive assembly plants for leading car manufacturers, and SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, Alberici was ready to act fast.

Engineering News-Record recently ranked Alberici as the 31st largest construction company in the United States with annual revenues of $2B. Nearly 80 percent of Alberici’s business is generated by repeat clients, a testament to their service and quality and the foundation for consistent growth.

Ron Borror serves as the Director of Technology Infrastructure for Alberici and has been with the company for 28 years. His team is responsible for all core infrastructure including compute, storage, telephony and user support. According to Borror, the primary goal of his team is to provide the best technology solutions to support project teams in the field and deliver the best construction projects to their clients.