Overview
Strategic Materials, Inc. (SMI) is North America’s largest and most comprehensive glass recycler. They’ve been in business for over 125 years, with close to 50 locations in the United States and Canada. The company focuses on creating value for customers through innovation and continuous improvement empowered by technology.
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Challenge
In 2022 Strategic Materials, Inc. (SMI) hired their first VP of IT, to address the growing challenges, demands, and IT-related costs associated with their business. The VP of IT was tasked with addressing an outdated and inadequate ERP system, plus streamlining operations and improving cost efficiencies. He also inherited a complicated collection of vendor relationships, and disparate vendor contracts that were not all providing value.
As a glass retailer, SMI had some unique business requirements and processes, yet their operations were straightforward on the technical side. The company had been operating in the private cloud for years, and desired to achieve higher levels of agility for their applications and data with integration to modern cloud orchestration tools.
The company sought to adopt a new service delivery model, emphasizing managed services and outsourcing their non-core IT functions to expert vendors. They also needed to streamline operations by transitioning from a private cloud to a public cloud solution, in order to realize agility and operational efficiency gains across the business.
As an added challenge SMI needed to consolidate vendor contracts, engage with a fewer number of partners, and ensure all agreements were appropriately serving the business.
Solution
Ntirety had been serving as the managed cloud services provider for SMI for over 5 years. As part of their contract, Ntirety provided managed services and continuous improvements through Guidance Level Agreements, or GLAs. Ntirety also led SMI through a complete digital transformation, which helped SMI fortify their infrastructure, reduce risk, and optimize their IT costs.
When SMI began the laborious process of revisiting vendor contracts in 2022, Ntirety was one of the few partners open to rewriting the terms. Because Ntirety provides comprehensive managed services across the full IT stack, they were able to offer solutions to address SMI’s new challenges. Together, SMI and Ntirety renegotiated the contract’s scope to include support for the technical cloud migration project.
Ntirety already held a deep knowledge of SMI’s technology and business, which facilitated a smooth transition. SMI felt comfortable with Ntirety’s technical competency throughout the migration to Microsoft Azure, conducted in alignment with their roadmap. The project also included modernization elements, and SMI leveraged Ntirety’s DBA On-Demand hours to support the work. Through this expanded partnership Ntirety served as a single point of accountability:
“It can be difficult for one partner to ‘be everything to everyone,’ but I do believe there are some partners, such as Ntirety, who cover the core pillars of IT delivery very well.”
-Sam Denman, VP of IT, Strategic Materials, Inc.
As an added benefit SMI enjoyed vendor consolidation, and the comfort of working with a partner with whom they’d already established trust.
Results
The Ntirety-supported cloud migration to Microsoft Azure was smooth, and the process was described by the team as “phenomenal.” SMI’s new IT environment is simpler, more modern, and more efficient. SMI’s infrastructure is now appropriate for their business, and their data model conforms to best practices, better serving the needs of their customers.
As the partnership endures, SMI continues to be impressed by Ntirety’s work. They feel comfortable allowing Ntirety to handle the core infrastructure delivery pieces of the project with little oversight, freeing up internal resources. When it comes to operations, SMI is now fully utilizing their technology and getting the most out of it.
The partnership with Ntirety has allowed SMI to focus on their core objectives and strategic initiatives, and to reduce the burden of IT management, with direct impact to business outcomes. Improved automation and integration with their ERP system has provided additional bandwidth, as Ntirety continues to support SMI as a strategic, long-term partner:
“Ntirety was one of the very few companies willing to take a long-term view of the partnership and not so focused on the 90-day sprint and just numbers,” said Sam Denman, VP of IT, Strategic Materials, Inc. “It’s the people who make the difference on both sides of the fence.”
As an added benefit SMI enjoyed vendor consolidation, and the comfort of working with a partner with whom they’d already established trust.
The project’s benefits are expected to extend to SMI’s customers in the future, as the modernized systems and optimized processes provide increased performance and a better ability to tackle market challenges.
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