In our early years, Avatara was focused primarily on engineering, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. Each of these sectors has unique needs that our CompleteCloud Platform addresses perfectly—from our industry-first CAD solution to compliance security and the ability to aggregate multiple sites into feeling like one centralized location. As we’ve expanded to serve a multitude of other industries, one in particular has recently seen explosive growth: distribution. We’ve always worked within this industry, but in the past few years we’ve seen an increasing number of distributors looking to make the jump away from their traditional on-premise model or expensive and convoluted IT systems. To help illustrate the complexity of these environments, let’s take a look at one of our newest distribution clients.
IT Challenges
At a high level, our client had three IT challenges plaguing them.
- Multiple Shifts: They had three shifts that required support outside of normal business hours. They couldn’t afford to have any downtime, so support that worked around their schedule was critical.
- Diverse Type of Users & Mobility Needs: The client had a variety of user types from those who simply input data on the warehouse floor to remote sales staff traveling the country. Each needed to integrate seamlessly into one IT environment, regardless of where they were or what they were doing.
- Vital Wi-Fi Needs & Robust Shipping/Receiving Stations: They had large warehouses that required solid Wi-Fi coverage throughout, for a variety of devices ranging from bar code scanners to forklifts on the floor.
These are common challenges among all of our distribution clients, but each business has its own specific needs that make them unique.
A Scalable Solution
This client was in a tricky situation; they were in the middle of merging two separate companies. This would double the size of their original business, so the demands and complexity of their IT increased dramatically. Fortunately, with the CompleteCloud Platform, we were able to migrate the entire infrastructure over one weekend and both companies were flawlessly merged into one business by Monday.
This wasn’t a one-time concern for our client, however. Their plan to grow into a nationwide presence relied heavily on acquiring new business and adding more sites across the country. One of the reasons CompleteCloud was so appealing to this distributor was the predictable pricing and scalability of our solution. The CompleteCloud Platform is billed on a per-user per-month pricing model, which means they knew exactly what they would be paying if they acquired a new company. This made it easy to estimate new IT costs and scale their business in a predictable way.
Managed Security Solution
Being able to easily scale their business was obviously important, but they also needed their data protected, which is where our managed security suite came in. With private cloud security, DNS filtering, a Security Operation Center, multifactor authentication, encrypted email, and cyber security training for employees, they had confidence in their data protection that they didn’t have before. Knowing the most secure IT platform on the market today was protecting their data, they could expand their business without any IT
worries.
Now, with scalable and secure technology, the only thing they needed was solid IT support to handle their growing business and work outside of the traditional 9–5 schedule. Avatara provides 24/7/365 support for all our clients—not just those who work during normal office hours. And where most IT providers charge more for support outside of traditional work hours, we don’t. Whether a warehouse employee is having connectivity issues with a kiosk or a remote sales rep needs help on a Friday night, we have them covered.
With a variety of users, locations across the country, and a rapid-growth model in the coming years, the only IT solution that made sense for this client was the CompleteCloud Platform.
