Blake & Pendleton

Blake & Pendleton (B&P) has been providing engineered compressed air systems, pumping systems, and energy saving heat transfer systems since 1971. Headquartered in Macon, Georgia, B&P has nearly 100 employees at nine branches strategically located in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee.

B&P’s experience and engineering expertise enables it to design, install and maintain compression systems that are efficient and cost effective to operate. The broad range of products B&P represents meets virtually every industrial and institutional compressed air requirement that its customers may have.

B&P further differentiates itself from the competition by offering the most thorough and responsive service available in the industry. B&P maintains large equipment and parts inventories at each branch location to fully support its customer’s needs. B&P’s fleet of over 30 service trucks are stocked with diagnostic instruments, tools and replacement inventory to improve responsiveness and minimize downtime.

Offering the best engineered compressed air, pumping and energy systems available backed with installation, parts and service, B&P keeps their customer’s operations running efficiently.

B&P Prospers with TakeStock

For many years, B&P has relied on Earnest & Associates (E&A) for its information technology (IT) support services. Infor ERP TakeStock software, an advanced solution for distributors, has been a cornerstone of the business relationship. E&A has provided numerous implementation and support services for B&P’s TakeStock installation, including the development of the Service Lite module to help B&P better manage its extensive service and repair operations. This module filled a void in the current TakeStock solution offering at a price point that made sense for B&P. Working closely with E&A consultants Jennifer Jones and Terry Dixon, TakeStock has been configured to facilitate B&P’s growth and success over the years.

In 2007, E&A’s Ken Litaker met with B&P Owner, Allen King and System Manager, Mike Bazemore to introduce E&A’s Managed Services. At that time, B&P was working with a local firm in Macon to provide support services for its desktop computers, servers and related IT equipment. B&P also had an employee who spent a significant amount of his time managing the IT vendor relationships and providing additional technical support services as needed. Allen and Mike were intrigued by Ken’s presentation where it was explained how a remote data backup, recovery and monitoring solution could automate routine tasks, thereby reducing overall IT maintenance costs while improving system integrity and performance.

Although B&P was interested in the benefits of managed services, immediate action was put on hold until a planned upgrade to TakeStock had been completed. This latter project unfolded in 2007 when E&A installed the latest version of TakeStock on several new rack-mounted Dell servers in the Macon office. E&A’s Adam Team traveled onsite from E&A’s office in Greensboro, NC to manage the installation of the software and equipment, which included new servers for the TakeStock application, the Progress database, and a terminal server to support B&P’s branch end users.

Pleased with the success of this project, B&P renewed its interest in pursuing E&A managed services as an integral part of its long-term growth strategy. “Mike said, ‘Someday I would like to have a single vendor for computer support’,” recalled E&A’s Phil Vanderwarker, who manages E&A’s account relationship with B&P. “This was not merely to provide an alternative to its current vendor for hardware and network services. Rather, the key issue was to allow B&P to focus on what it does best; which is to service their customers, and not be distracted by servicing their IT equipment,” Phil explained.

On that point, B&P was faced with a dilemma. B&P had recently expanded into new territories, making it difficult for a single-location vendor to travel to all of its branch sites and fix routine problems in a timely or cost-effective manner; but the company’s complex systems were destined to pose increasingly difficult problems for its own employees to resolve without the assistance of outside expertise. Mike said, “We needed E&A to build out a more sophisticated system to help grow our business and yet be able to communicate with our various departments and staff so that our issues could be addressed in a timely and effective manner.”

E&A Introduces a Comprehensive Solution

In 2008, Ken began to dialogue closely with Allen and Mike. Understanding that B&P needed a more flexible and affordable solution, Ken proposed a blend of services to provide a comprehensive solution to B&P, as follows:

• E&A Managed Services – an intelligent agent would connect E&A’s remote Network Operations Center (NOC) to the B&P network. Through these agents, E&A would be able to continuously monitor the network while E&A’s Pro Recovery software would provide secure, offsite data backup and recovery services.
• E&A Network Services --- E&A’s human resources in Greenville, SC would provide scheduled onsite support services and consulting expertise for network-related issues.
• Third Party Services -- Harland Technology Services (HTS) would also be available as a third-party responder in the event of any unplanned contingencies that might require immediate, onsite support.

Importantly, E&A would serve as the single point of contact, assigning resources to resolve any issues that might arise. Mike would serve as the go-to at B&P, establishing clear rules for end users on how to engage E&A technical support and provide a strong communication link between the companies.

“We talked with B&P about how we can use technology to support any customer remotely,” recalled Ken. “We explained how B&P could empower its end users to access E&A support resources directly to get their issues resolved quickly and effectively. At the end of these discussions, Allen recognized that we could fully support their business even as they expanded geographically and their systems requirements grew more complex.”

B&P recognized the value of E&A’s solution and signed a services plan in May, 2008. “We realized that advances in technology had made it unnecessary for us to have an internal IT person,” affirmed Mike. “We also realized that having two different sources for software and technical support wasn’t a good fit; it would be better to bring those two functions together. Since E&A was already supporting TakeStock and had demonstrated it could deliver a technical services solution too, it made sense to choose E&A to support the whole package.”

Ken teamed with E&A’s Paul Muller on the project. Together, Ken and Paul visited the Macon office to install the NAS and the Pro Recovery and Pro NetGuard software on B&P’s hardware including the TakeStock server, terminal server and mail server as well as select desktop computers. Later, Paul used an Internet connection to configure and install software on the desktops at B&P’s branch locations.

The installation proved successful. B&P’s vastly upgraded system has exceeded management’s expectations, providing the secure computing platform the company needs while significantly reducing costs.

B&P Benefits from Technology

B&P lists several major benefits it has enjoyed since implementing E&A’s managed services solution.

The smart use of technology to automate routine tasks has freed up Mike’s time, allowing him to utilize his talents in other areas. “We have a much higher level of expertise supporting and monitoring our technology resources day in and day out,” said Mike. “Although we’ve had a 40 percent increase in users, today I spend only about 20 percent of my time on IT issues which is considerably less than before.”

Mike cites the reduced costs and increased accountability that results from working with a single vendor as another major benefit to B&P. “It can become very time-consuming and expensive when the software vendor blames the hardware, and the hardware vendor blames the software,” said Mike. “We have eliminated the problem of finger-pointing by using a single-source provider.”

To illustrate his point, Mike contrasts how things worked before and after. “We were an unfortunate victim of a virus several years ago,” said Mike. “Our vendors spent many hours trying to work through that process and both vendors were saying different things. We had a tough time trying to figure out what we needed to do to prevent it from happening again.”

Now, Mike says, our antivirus is kept current and we have the comfort of knowing that our system is continuously monitored and supported by E&A, thereby ensuring a consistently high level of integrity that our stakeholders can count on. “What a business owner can lose sleep over at night is the nagging worry that the system may not be adequately protected. In addition, if we experience a problem, E&A is able to remotely connect and resolve the issues quickly and with much less cost than having a local technician travel on-site,” said Mike. The remaining minor issues that require physical handling are handled internally. Mike tasks individuals with responsibility at each branch location to work with a local repair shop or send the item to Macon.

Indeed, B&P has significantly reduced its outlays for travel costs related to computer network support since it has discovered that most technical issues can be handled remotely. “We’ve increased the use of Webex sessions,” said Mike. “E&A can login and perform diagnostics work, setup new users, or do most anything else we need to do without being onsite.”

E&A has configured Barracuda spam filtering software to reduce workload and risk to the B&P network. B&P receives approximately 500,000 emails each month and only 6 percent of the total inbound messages received are valid and are permitted to pass through. The high-level security provided by Barracuda has proven essential to keeping junk email out of the system and preventing B&P’s systems from being overloaded.

E&A installed Sonicwall antivirus software to help contain viruses that might exist in the remaining emails. Sonicwall is also being installed on the laptops that are not being monitored by Pro NetGuard to prevent infected computers from connecting to the B&P network. Mike said that last month alone, approximately 1 percent of the inbound emails sent to B&P contained viruses. “If our spam filter and antivirus software was not kept up to date, the users at my company would come to a crawl in a very short period of time,” asserted Mike.

Through the NOC, Pro NetGuard software remotely monitors over 5,000 software, hardware and security aspects of B&P’s system on a 24x7x365 basis. Pro NetGuard routinely cleans B&P’s servers and workstations to remove spyware, malware, Internet debris and temp files; patched with the latest critical patches; and updated with the latest antivirus signatures. B&P has benefited from the proactive management of its systems infrastructure, reducing downtime and security incidents while providing the reports the company needs to make good decisions.

Another example of B&P gaining benefit from the proactive management of its system resources occurred in early 2009 when Pro NetGuard detected that B&P’s email server was at 85 percent storage capacity. Ken closely monitored the situation with Mike, taking prudent steps to extend the life of the machine while consulting with B&P about their options going forward. “The trick with a new server decision is to avoid wasting money by purchasing too soon, or before it becomes a necessity; nor too late, when an overburdened server might pose an increased risk to the business,” commented Ken.

Mike credits Pro NetGuard’s reporting system with boosting confidence when it came time to make a decision. “Pro NetGuard pushed the information to us at just the right time,” said Mike. “I showed Allen the stats on our email server and it made his decision to purchase new equipment an easy one.” E&A’s Tom Bulman is currently working remotely from E&A’s office in Northfield, OH to configure and install the replacement server to be located in Macon.

A Couple of Close Calls

Before implementing the Pro Recovery solution, Mike recalled how B&P had relied on an error-prone tape backup system that he feared might prove unreliable in a pinch. “We realized if we really had to do a restore from a tape backup it was going to be a very long process, and we weren’t really sure that we would get a very good backup,” explained Mike. “With Pro Recovery, we’ve got access to a secure, offsite backup that can be restored within hours to the exact point in time we want to return.”

The value of having E&A’s data backup and recovery solution was driven home by a close call B&P experienced on a particularly memorable Mother’s Day in 2008.

“We had a tornado come through here,” said Allen. “It passed by our back fence. Trees fell on the property line but narrowly missed the building. Another one hundred feet and it would’ve wiped out everything!” continued Allen, who went on to tell us that a business located less than a half mile away from B&P was completely decimated by the same tornado.

As B&P scrambled to get back online, the fact that B&P’s data remained secure and available for retrieval was a confidence booster. E&A assisted B&P as best it could until power was restored the following day. “The emergency proved the point that we did the right thing because we could get our system up and running a lot faster than we otherwise might have,” declared Mike.

B&P had other situations occur that were somewhat less dramatic but nevertheless had great potential for disruption. “We had a laptop stolen out of a service truck at night and another laptop stolen during a weekend,” explained Mike. “Upon discovery, the employee immediately called me and I contacted Ken and Paul for assistance. They immediately went into the system and disconnected the user and the laptop to prevent them from accessing our system. It was comforting to realize the technical support was readily available and our system was protected.”

B&P Achieves its Goals

With E&A’s solution in place, B&P has been able to take advantage of new opportunities as they present themselves. For example, B&P has asked E&A to quickly mobilize to help fold its new branch operation in Hickory, NC into the system. “The expansion mandates that we react quickly, and we expect our vendors to keep up with us,” said Mike. “E&A can go from workstation to workstation to establish new users in the system, install software including the TakeStock application, email accounts, everything, and do it all remotely using a Webex connection. When we need to move, E&A moves at the same speed, which is wonderful. It takes a lot of headache and concern away.”

Mike reflected on the difference that E&A’s comprehensive software application and technical support services has meant for him and B&P. “When this was put under my umbrella, I had reservations about my ability to do an effective job,” said Mike. “E&A has taken those concerns away. Individual users can send a message to TakeStock support where E&A can determine if the problem is a software, hardware or network issue. E&A can direct the request to the right resource and get the problem fixed. Through E&A, we have confidence that the appropriate people are making decisions. E&A is a single site response center so our end users don’t have to be technical experts,” he elaborated.

Importantly, B&P’s goal of using technology to support its business growth has been achieved. “E&A allows us to make better use of our time,” said Mike. “We can focus our energies on growing the company at the same time that E&A has been able to increase our use of technology. We are extremely pleased.”

To learn more about B&P, visit the company’s web site at www.blakeandpendleton.com.