How a Home Builder Cut Costs with Field Office Deployment

Making the most of a limited IT budget during a housing market collapse

Company Profile:

Our client is a nationally recognized homebuilder that has been committed to excellence since the late 1950s. Today, the client is still going strong by adhering to the principles set in place by its founder. The founder envisioned a homebuilding company whose homes would provide lasting advantages for years to come. The client is the premier national builder for Single Family Homes, Townhomes & Condominiums, Active Adult Lifestyle, and Custom Designed dwelling structures.

Business Challenge:

Our client faced serious challenges during the economic downturn along with most Fortune 500 companies. These companies invested significant capital and effort to achieve the status. When the housing market collapsed, the company was faced with drastically reduced revenues. They quickly depleted their assets, which in turn drastically reduced the stock prices and overall value of the company. The company was also dealing with fixed expenses of a Fortune 500 enterprise.

This situation called for quick action to reduce costs and increase efficiency. This meant that the company had to find ways to reduce expenses and make better use of a limited technology budget.

Technology Challenge:

In addition to the financial issues and business challenges, the company was facing major issues with its Information Technology configuration. Some of the more serious issues were the lack of reliable backups of critical business data and unreliable communication capability between field staff and the home office.

Mobile offices and remote crew locations were taking several weeks to establish reliable connectivity. The company had difficulty delivering the required information to job sites because crucial IT services were not available. The information was not being processed efficiently, which delayed project delivery and reduced revenue. The issues we identified were as follows:

• Unreliable disaster recovery plan due to a lack of reliable back up data.
• The exchange server's primary storage drive was filling every few days.
• Compliance issues with SOX, OSHA, and PCI were being left unattended.
• Build and sales sites were unable to report business data due to a lack of connectivity.
• Aging network and computer infrastructure not compatible with today’s technology.
• Failing Citrix Farm.
• Bandwidth issues from HQ and remote sites preventing proper document exchange.
• Inadequate network communication issues causing 20 minute login times during peak use.

Solution:

SwiftTech Solutions has the extensive construction industry experience and an understanding of the associated business requirements. Our field office deployment solutions were applied to multiple areas of the enterprise. This enabled our client to maximize their technology budget by cutting costs and improving services.

The SwiftTech team developed a project plan to address issues:

• Resolve the connectivity problems and system bottlenecks.
• Address the compliance issues by creating technical forms, documentation, and processes to protect, track, and monitor data access.
• Eliminate unneeded services, licenses, equipment, and support contracts.
• Improve network connectivity with data carriers.
• Renegotiate with current service providers to retain the same services for a lower cost.
• Reduce construction and sales offices significantly and then setup computers, phones, and full connectivity.

Results:

SwiftTech Solutions' efforts saved the company a total of 380% over its original expenditures. By consolidating services, we eliminated process delays by executing virtualization processes where necessary. The company now has better data access and documentation capability due to increased communication speed and equipment utilization. Also, the company is moving forward with a scalable network. They can now produce required documents efficiently and allow a reliable backup and recovery strategy that meets all compliance process requirements.

• Automated information and document sharing processes eliminated wasteful delays.
• Data carrier expenses were cut by 70%.
• Repairs to connectivity problems increased productivity by a factor of 800%, as compared to the established benchmarks.
• Communication improvements to the network reduced costs caused by downtime and improved overall business operations.
• Time for new sales and remote offices to connect to the headquarters was reduced to 48 hours, as opposed to the original two-month time frame. In all business, especially construction, saved time translates directly to a better bottom line.
• Improved documentation and reporting procedures put the company back in compliance. Plus, the efforts saved them tens of millions of dollars in fines that could have been imposed if compliance issues were allowed to continue unchecked.

Bill of Materials: