W.T. Rich Company builds success in the cloud
Box was the clear choice to move to the cloud
When Gene Massie assumed the role of Director of Information Technology for W.T. Rich Company (https://www.wtrich.com), his first responsibility was to take the firm’s technology into the 21st century. His predecessor had started the move to the cloud with the roll out of remote desktops and Citrix File Share, but the firm’s files were still stored centrally in the main office. When that office lost power, which happened almost weekly, no one could access or sync their data.
This was intolerable for the Massachusetts-based company that had built a reputation “delivering exceptional construction management services, consistently exceeding expectations, and setting new standards in safety, quality, customer satisfaction and employee engagement”. Massie knew moving the firm’s content to the cloud was priority number one and set out to find a solution that could match their commitment to providing the utmost in quality, reliability, and security.
“I spent the first month of my new role trying to plan out our technology and evaluate everything that was out there,” said Massie. “Box was the best fit because it offered unlimited storage, as well as the stability and security that we needed.”
As a company with a lot of K-12, public safety, airport, and government contracts, reliability and security were very important. “Project teams need to be able to share data and be productive wherever they are located, whether they are at the corporate offices, at home, or at a job site. With Box, our folks don’t have to worry about the IT infrastructure, they can just focus on building buildings and getting their job done.”
“There are other options on the market that we looked at that were less expensive at the outset, but I wasn’t confident with their security. I know Box is rock solid and ultimately going to be cost effective in the long run because it can grow and scale with us. The unlimited storage and the ongoing improvements they continue to make to the solution give me the confidence we will be able to efficiently support our needs going forward.”
Box made the transition seamless
Massie paid for Box consulting to help him smooth the move to the cloud. “Box consultants were a great resource. They were so professional. They laid out what was going to happen, step-by-step, which helped me get the buy-in I needed from the executive team, as well as all our employees.”
He continued, “The roll out was tremendous. It really made me look good. I was assigned an account executive at Box to work with and they laid everything out for us. They looked at how much and where our data was and told us exactly what was going to happen.
We planned to make the move over a weekend. I’ve been in IT for over 20 years and have been involved in many implementations, so I was prepared for hiccups, but everything went seamlessly. It was spectacular.
Beforehand, our CEO was so concerned that he asked me to make an external hard drive backup of all our data. We also kept our old on-premises servers up and running, so we could make sure everything was there. The Box team replicated our servers exactly, which meant there were no questions about where things were. Our users could find and see their data immediately and were comfortable using the system because the folder structure was the same.
It was all done right and quickly. We started the implementation on Friday and were prepared to go live on Monday, but our data was fully sync’d by Saturday morning and, after confirming everything was there, we were off and running. It saved us a lot of time and money and gave us peace of mind, which is hard to put a value on.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Two weeks after going live, the global pandemic hit and we had to shut down in person operations. Thanks to Box, we were okay. We had everything we needed and were able to keep working with no interruption.”
Box just keeps getting better
“We’re enjoying the journey with Box. There is so much functionality with the web version. There’s stuff we haven’t even tapped into yet or even thought about that Box can do to help us improve our business. The product is always evolving and integrating with more and more things. It just keeps getting better and better.”
Massie elaborated, “90% of the firm is on Box drive all day, every day, using it as a traditional file server with all their folders, and they love it. Now that they are comfortable with it, they are starting to get to know and use the other capabilities that Box offers, like Box Sign, and are really excited about them.”
The adoption of new features is quick and seamless. “We love the ease of use of Box,” said Massie. ““We empower our users to play with the product. We have a lot of people that are not super tech savvy, but they quickly get it and can be productive right away. Everything is cataloged nicely and simple to understand. Box support is phenomenal with answers easy to find and quick videos that show us what to do and how to implement things.”
Some of the implementations involve maximizing the value of their other technology investments. “I’m constantly impressed by Box’s ability to connect to different things,” said Massie. “We appreciate the native integrations with some of our partners, like Microsoft, as well as the APIs. We know that when we need to integrate with something it’s not going to be complicated.”
Box is used many ways to support the business
“Box is literally our server. We’ve cut the cord and don’t have any on-premises servers anymore. Everything is in the cloud, making Box our biggest technology partner, outside of Microsoft, for connecting all our data points,” said Massie.
“Box is great for collaboration, facilitating information flows between our employees, partners, and even clients, whether they are in the office, at home, or on a job site,” said Massie. “We have people traveling all over. They may be going to a job site, a conference, or a client event, and they know they can get on to Box and everything they need is right there. We just had a team go up to Canada, where we were working on a fire station, and they were able to call up the drawings from their iPad right there on the spot. They didn’t have to worry about VPNs or getting a secure signal, they were just off and running.”
Another workstream that Massie says Box helps with is file requests. “Our staff can make file requests to partners asking them to send us their drawings through Box, as opposed to having to use another repository, or worse somebody’ else’s repository. From an IT and security standpoint this gives us more control because we trust Box to protect the integrity of the data and prevent leakage.”
Massie continued, “We are starting to play around with Box Relay to automate collaborative workflows.” The eagerness stems from their success with Box Sign. “In the last year and a half, we started using Box Sign for our contracts. We were literally having discussions with another vendor to try to digitize a lot of our paper documents and contracts and realized that Box could offer us very similar, if not better, functionality, based on our environment. We were blown away that we could add this capability without having to spend anything more.
Box saved us all the money we were looking at spending on an annual contract and implementation [$15K a year, plus a one-time implementation fee of $5000] and gave us the ability to revolutionize how we were doing contract signing. Now we are looking to expand into other processes, like onboarding. If we're sending out an offer letter, why not use Box Sign, which we trust, to get it done.”
Another feature the firm loves is Box Mobile. Massie explained, “Our staff loves that they can securely capture, access, and share content on any device anywhere. When they are on the job site, they can take a picture with their cell phone, and then, instead of having to go back to the office and upload everything, they can pick a folder to automatically save the images to, which saves everybody a ton of time.”
Something else the firm is excited to use is Box AI and Box Hubs to help them surface relevant content and insights faster. “It is nice to have a product that is flexible and can grow with your firm,” said Massie. “We know we have a partner in Box we can trust and work with to evaluate new features and help us take the next step.”