Company: STO Building Group
Industry: Construction
Size: $9.5 billion in annual construction volume, 13 companies, 39 offices, 4,000 employees
Locations: US, Canada, UK, and Ireland
CSI's approach to Modern Procurement is moving STO from reactive hardware ordering to proactive, saving them time and money:
A transition from an on-site VPN to a vFTD will virtually eliminate crashes, while maintaining a highly secure environment
With 4000 employees spread across offices throughout the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland, the STO Building Group is at the leading edge of construction management by using technology to:
When they were facing a hardware supply issue—with 600 built-to-order laptops on back order, amid the recent chip shortage—they needed a partner who could get creative and help them track down the critical tools they needed to keep their business running, and their clients' projects moving.
With a unique line of sight into Lenovo's warehouses, CSI worked with STO’s Lenovo rep to uncover in-stock devices that would not only match STO's specs but exceed them—and for a price that matched their standard units.
With STO caught up on their backlog in just 8 months, CSI also stepped in to help them manage registrations and licenses and quickly got to work moving STO from a state of reactive hardware ordering to proactive.
“In very difficult circumstances over the last two to three years, with COVID and the supply chain disruptions, Compugen’s ability to provide equipment that we were struggling to get from other sources, their ability to keep us updated on supply chain issues in near real time, and their ability to help us make strategic decisions with that information, reinforced the partnership and the relationship that we had built and has transcended into their services,” said Terry Robbins, CTO for STO.
Part of CSI’s dedicated personal service approach includes a custom-built storefront. The CSI procurement team worked with STO to create a storefront for all hardware orders, built exactly the way they want it, to their specs, with bundles that make ordering easy. Their storefront provides real-time views into warehouse stock levels, so inventory is always up-to-date, and integrates with CSI's CRM, giving client teams automatic order updates so they can seamlessly help STO manage orders. Because it's built in the cloud, it's more secure.
CSI is also working to run an internal analysis to see how many of their built-to-order systems they procure on a monthly basis, in order to create a standard inventory level and transform the wait time on their systems from four to six weeks to the ability to ship units overnight.
This transformation from out-of-stock and behind on enabling STO team members with the tools they need, to easy, integrated, and proactive has saved STO time and money—and helped them sleep at night, knowing everything will be taken care of.
“I would credit the Compugen team for being really engaged whenever we needed support, whether we needed connections with technology companies or insights into what was really happening with the supply chain. They were always there to bridge that gap,” said Terry, CTO of STO Building Group. “Through their connections and direct conversations with manufacturers, they were able to give us true, real-time credible information about the realities of the wait times we were facing. We appreciate that the Compugen team would identify alternative models that had availability and take us through strategic discussions that allowed us to make changes in our configurations that were very acceptable to us, that has made it possible to catch up on the year we lost in our technology refresh cycles and still support our people’s evolving technology needs.”
”The other advantage,” Robbins continued, “was the Compugen team’s willingness to make sure that inventory was earmarked for us, even when we weren’t ready to pull the trigger exactly at that time. This gave us some options in terms of a runway of lead time so that we could really take the time to evaluate and be confident in our decision, and that to me, was real, true partnership.”
When STO was looking to transition from an on-site VPN system to a vFTD (virtual Firewall Threat Defense), they turned to their CSI partnership for the same fast response times, high level of personal service, and team knowledge, dedication, and creativity.
When the tool they work working with was discontinued, CSI helped them track down a solution through Microsoft Azure that will help bridge their transition to vFTD, enabling them to virtually eliminate VPN crashes, while elevating security.
