Challenges

Sargent is a 350-person-strong, employee-owned infrastructure construction company in Stillwater, Maine. It has projects in seven states, covering everything from wind farms to landfill cells.

When Sargent had a data breach in 2020, they were lucky that their IT service provider, Network Coverage (NetCov), was there to get them back up and running.

The close call forced Sargent to realize that a file management solution that could provide both data access and threat protection, in the office and in the field, would be the way to minimize the risk of future attacks.

However, their office employees were using Dropbox, a notoriously insecure file sharing platform, and were struggling to effectively store and share information. Additionally, field teams couldn’t access the up-to-date information they needed in a timely manner which was slowing projects down.

For example, a project manager in the office would submit paperwork to the owner for review and approval, while also emailing the same paperwork to the supervisor in the field. If the owner came back with a change, the project manager would need to email the supervisor again to let them know of the latest plan. Once the owner approved the final changes the project manager would need to email the supervisor again to let them know of the final decision so they could procure the right material and begin construction.

Not only was the process slow and tedious, but on jobsites with limited connectivity, the supervisor might only be receiving notifications once a day. Meaning they had to spend time searching through all their emails to try to find the latest plans and approvals - that is, if they hadn’t already started construction working off old versions of the plan. The result – project delays and unnecessary expenses due to procuring the wrong part or building off the wrong specs.

To overcome these issues and stay on schedule, many project managers purchased personal hard drives and downloaded files to them for access from anywhere. If those hard drives were lost or damaged, a common occurrence, they would lose data, causing even more rework. In addition, having unprotected, and unknown, hard drives with sensitive company and client data on jobsites posed a significant risk.

It was time for a solution that worked for everyone—employees in the office, teams in the field, and the IT department responsible for keeping all data secure.

Sargent turned to NetCov for a solution that could both improve productivity and protect their data.

“NetCov has always been a lifesaver, and they were there in our time of despair,” said Tasha Gardner, CFO at Sargent. “Through all our years of working together and all their technology recommendations, they have never led us astray. So, it only made sense for us to turn to them for help.”

NetCov recommended Egnyte.

Saving Time and Money With Egnyte

With Egnyte, Sargent’s personnel have secure access to the files they need, when they need them, regardless of whether they’re in the office or on remote jobsites. They can easily share files across internal teams, as well as external vendors, owners, and subcontractors.

Getting a plan approved quickly evolved from a convoluted series of emails to a simple file upload. Now, from a single Egnyte folder, the project manager, the owner, and the supervisor on site all have access to the latest version of the file. This means less time searching through email for files, less rework on projects, and less cost.

Sargent can also send large files more easily to potential subcontractors or vendors. Previously, when bidding on a project, estimators and project manager teams struggled to provide large plan sets to the potential client.

“We have plan copiers and printers that used to run 24 hours a day just for people to give us a price,” said Jason Light, IT manager at Sargent. “Now we just send them PDF files.”

The teams in the field love Egnyte because it means no more VPN, long delays waiting for a wireless connection to get the files they need, or time spent backing up and restoring files.

“We did a cost benefit analysis,” Gardner said. “The time savings resulting from the project management team and the supervisors not having to backup and restore their files...that in itself pays for the cost of Egnyte.”

And Sargent isn’t stopping there.

More Opportunities Ahead

Sargent is looking to expand its use of Egnyte to construction equipment. Today’s machinery is equipped with GPS, computers, and hotspots with internet connectivity. However, field engineers and surveyors manually upload data to each machine.

Currently, surveyors create a file (such as a GIS shapefile), put it on a thumb drive, travel to a site, plug it in, upload the data, then run the file and make sure it is going to work. Then they drive to the next jobsite and do the same thing. This process not only wastes time, but also leads to a high degree of job dissatisfaction.

“It's getting harder to keep good surveyors because they spend a lot of time traveling, going between jobsites and physically carrying files to the machines,” Light said.

“What if we used Egnyte to upload the files automatically to the equipment?” Light said. “The surveyor could stay in the office and just push the files directly to the machines. That is going to save them a bunch of time.”

For Sargent, what started as a project to better protect their data and improve access to files evolved into an initiative to optimize their workflows. With Egnyte, employees in the office and in the field can easily access files and collaborate from anywhere. And IT is confident in the security of project documentation and client data. The result is less risk and greater productivity across the entire organization.

“We now have happier people,” Gardner said. “And happier people are more productive people.”

Challenges

A ransomware attack over the weekend had brought the Engineering, Design, Construction, and Smart Manufacturing firm to a standstill. In order to contain the breach they shut down everything including all on-premises and mobile access to their file server. And without access to their project files they couldn’t access critical information such as updated drawings and change orders; they couldn’t respond to requests; they couldn’t engage with their subcontractors; they had no ability to deliver on their projects.

Solution

Egnyte was deployed across the firm and, with the help of Egnyte's Professional Services Team, 7 TB of clean, ransomware-free project data was cut over to get them up and running. In order to facilitate a smooth transition and better user acceptance, Egnyte employed additional training including additional coffee chats, demos, and extra office hours.

Results

Now, the firm is almost fully deployed with 750 seats and Egnyte covering not just the project files but business files such as HR and Finance. In addition, it is governing and securing their SharePoint instance and file services. Since deploying the platform there have been no additional incidents, and with Egnyte’s data governance solution if they are ever hit by ransomware again the solution will detect it and be able to proactively mitigate any damage.

Challenges

With its client roster growing each year, along with the number of projects the company had in precon or under construction, C.W. Driver Cos. took an organic approach to building its IT infrastructure—adding storage capacity and file-sharing tools as needed. This created three issues: storage, constant need of expensive upgrades, and shadow IT (data silos and backup issues).

Solution

After investigating cloud-based file management solutions, Blaine Crawford, C.W. Driver Cos.' Director of IT, found that Egnyte checked all the key boxes for his company. Egnyte offered a user-friendly interface for file collaboration from any device. It also provided the familiar Windows-mapped-drive format the company’s employees had become comfortable using. And it allowed C.W. Driver Cos. to retire its on-premises data-storage infrastructure and outsource it all to the cloud.

Results

Integrating Egnyte with Autodesk, C.W. Driver Cos. ensures its teams always have the most recent document versions. Because they can access files from mobile devices, superintendents can easily pull up drawings and RFIs in the field. And after replacing on-premises storage with Egnyte’s easy-to-scale cloud solution, the IT team hasn’t had to raise its data storage budget for eight years.

Challenges

Page needed to find a solution to work together more efficiently. With projects that can have an extensive employee team and up to a hundred external consultants located in multiple cities, Page had files spread across various systems and locations, making finding, sharing, and collaborating on files extremely challenging.

Solution

Now, Page’s plan is to take all the content (that is contractually permissible) off their file servers and move it to Egnyte. To date, they have entirely transitioned their Marketing content to the platform and are now focusing on Accounting, Human Resources, and IT. The goal is to get to the point when all new projects begin in Egnyte.

Results

Page was recently awarded a large healthcare project and their use of Egnyte resulted in significant improvements in file sharing, collaboration and data security

Challenges: Going from Analog to Digital

In business for over 50 years, ESA environmental consulting has 21 offices across California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southeastern United States. ESA clients range from government agencies to non-profit organizations to private industry. ESA scientists, planners, historians, archaeologists, engineers, designers, and technical specialists provide critical thinking, in-depth analyses, and committed follow-through to guide successful policy development and project planning and deliver enduring multi-objective solutions. ESA is 100% employee owned.

The trigger to work with Egnyte began with a casual conversation about “what if” something goes wrong. Headquartered in San Francisco, where there are a lot of earthquakes, ESA needed a way to retrieve content and stay on task. Business continuity needed to be thoroughly addressed.

Before cloud adoption, ESA’s field staff couldn’t quickly transfer data or files. Engineers gathered field data and then traveled back to the office to send information. There was no way to transmit this information digitally from the field. Teams wasted a significant amount of time. In addition, there was the challenge of having 100+ people working on Computer Aid Design (CAD) files. This environment raised a range of concerns related to the capture of data, delivery of information, provision of service to the end-user, security, and continuity. ESA needed a single source of truth to deliver uninterrupted, secure data to the end-user.

With information coming from locations throughout the United States, document control became a challenge. To make matters worse, ESA also utilized a data center that required a lot of maintenance. Large amounts of field data enter BIM-based environmental impact assessment models. The challenge is moving these large amounts of data from the field into the office where the modeling work happens and where teams, often operating from different sites, can collaborate on the data effectively.

Solution: One Source of Truth

As an organization, ESA looks at technology strategically by evaluating whether a tool can make a difference with client satisfaction. It is also important for ESA to partner with software providers.

“The exchange is a journey,” said Spencer Mains, Director of ESAtech, ESA. “Once you go into implementation, ongoing innovation is important. A strong belief and high empathy for the worker and what they endure every day is vital to the success of the digital workplace.”

For Mains, it was a no-brainer to roll out Egnyte as ESA’s single source of truth. Egnyte reduces work stress by providing one location for production and storage. When off-site personnel work on mobile devices and remote desktops, the information ends in the same production environment. Engineering firms can retain their content, comply with contractual obligations, and comply with warranties. With Egnyte, ESA can archive such content and quickly retrieve it when needed.

Egnyte does not stand in the way of business. Collaboration is swift and secure, which helps to ensure success. Mains provides an example: “A colleague contacted me letting me know he had a huge problem. He said, ‘I have to get an ERP done by the end of the week and I don’t know how I’m going to accomplish that.’” Mains offered up the solution. They set up shared space on Egnyte where all 15 people on the team, 5 of them from the client side, could co-edit in real-time the environmental impact review. What normally took weeks was down to a few days. For the ESA team, this event was a paradigm shift.

Security and governance was a deciding factor for partnering with Egnyte. ESA works with clients that require security assurances and service continuity. Today, ESA is able to assure team engagement and project information is secure and business will proceed uninterrupted.

With Egnyte for AEC, ESA’s clients can:

• Access field data and technical documents.
• Collaborate on the production of technical documents easily and efficiently.
• Be assured valuable and sensitive information is secure.
• Be assured services can proceed uninterrupted.

Results: A Heightened Focus on the Customer

ESA is a professional services consultancy with a focus on environmental science, engineering, and architecture. Driven by utilization rates, the less time they spend on administration work, the more time they can deliver for the client. “Eight minutes a day saved from doing administration may not sound like much”, says Mains, “but if you have 400 people, that is a lot of time. And when they use that time on for more intellectual tasks delivering greater value back to the customer, you start to see real results.”

For Mains, it was a no-brainer to roll out Egnyte as ESA’s source of truth. Egnyte reduces work stress by providing a single location for production and storage. Regardless of whether people are working offsite or on remote desktops, the information ends up in the same location. ESA can also obtain archived content within the storage environment within minutes.

Making the change to Egnyte was handled in a deliberate manner. The first step was to migrate content. During the journey, Mains contemplated introducing all the bells and whistles the platform offers. Instinctively, he knew that approach could overwhelm the organization and jeopardize progress. Mains stayed the course with a more pragmatic approach.

This cadence is proving out. Main explains that at some point ESA will reach the advanced user phase. He says, “A lot of people do not realize Egnyte’s capabilities, but it is important to introduce features incrementally.” Today, the ESA IT department’s role has evolved from providing Egnyte tech support to providing education. ESA is teaching people about the appropriate use of Egnyte and how to leverage the software in their daily work practices.

And that push to get employees to buy in is paying off. Mains said he was recently out for a walk when he heard a voice call his name. It was a coworker wanting to buy him a beer. “Hesitantly I agreed, thinking, ‘Where is this going?,’” he said, jokingly. The colleague proceeded to tell him about working from home and using Egnyte, singing the product’s praises. His colleague said it was ,“...fast, snappy, and completely delightful.” “Nine times out of ten, you get comments that things are not working well,” Mains said. “When you get that kind of feedback, you know you are doing the right thing.”

Challenges

On-premises servers requiring multiple systems—and 20 years of data—to manage

Operating since 1988, Riverside had accumulated a large and increasingly complex infrastructure of on-premises file servers and data storage hardware.

As the firm grew—in employee count as well as geographic footprint—the team implemented a range of cloud solutions to enable employees to manage some of their data in the cloud.

Solution

Bringing together data management and governance in an intuitive, unified platform

After researching the industry for data management solutions, Robert Sciaraffo, managing director of technology at Riverside, and his technology team turned to Egnyte’s enterprise platform.

The first selling point was Egnyte’s user-friendly interface, with a visual folder structure familiar to any Windows or Mac user. “The end-user experience was so intuitive that the transition was a nonevent,” Sciaraffo says.

Another reason Egnyte topped Riverside’s list was the platform’s extensive app-integration library. As Sciaraffo notes, the company had been looking for opportunities to connect multiple apps to improve the staff’s workflows, and Egnyte's DocuSign integration was a good example of how that can work.

“With the Egnyte-DocuSign integration, a user can send a signature request to anyone, and when they eSign the document, the signed copy automatically lands in the correct Egnyte folder,” he says.

Finally, Sciaraffo explains, even if there were lingering questions about whether the solution checked every box on their wish list, the Riverside team ultimately found a compelling reason to go with Egnyte regardless. “From a partnership perspective, Egnyte was phenomenal to work with from the very beginning,” he says.

“The pre-sales experience was outstanding. The Professional Services team couldn’t have been more helpful and patient. And even now—after we’ve been a customer for more than a year—our Egnyte Project Management team still calls us regularly to find out if we have any new needs or requests.”

Results

Unlocking workflow efficiencies

As it turned out, though, the Egnyte platform did check all the key functionality boxes on Riverside’s wish list. And today, with the solution deployed across the firm, both Riverside’s business users and the technology team are enjoying many operational improvements, such as:

Faster workflows

With all their files centralized and accessible on the Egnyte cloud platform, Riverside’s staff can easily and safely share content externally. If the files are eligible for sharing outside the firm—which the technology team can also manage through Egnyte—employees can share them directly through their Egnyte environment.

Efficiencies through integrations

With the Egnyte DocuSign integration, Riverside’s employees who need signatures on a regular basis can send them through DocuSign. When the recipient hits the “Finish” button, the signed file automatically lands in the pre-designated Egnyte folder where it belongs.

Reduced costs

With the firm’s file management and sharing needs all handled through the centralized Egnyte environment, Riverside no longer needs additional cloud apps to house its data, or third-party software like the file-locking and encryption tools it used to manage its on-premises file server infrastructure. Egnyte is helping Riverside reduce its software costs as well as the time IT spends managing disparate solutions.

Improved data governance

With Egnyte’s Secure & Govern functionality, Riverside’s IT team has greater ability to protect and control the firm’s data.

Enhanced cybersecurity

Because it signed up for Egnyte’s enterprise platform, Riverside now also has access to a host of machine-learning capabilities for data security, including insider threat detection and zero-day ransomware protection.