At ITW Welding, Speed Sparks Success

GASTON BROWN SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR, ITW WELDING

Advanced IT was the key to an Ohio company’s continued growth. Advanced IT was the key to an Ohio At ITW Welding, Speed Sparks Success

THE CHALLENGE: In the welding industry, Troy, Ohio–based ITW Welding is a superstar. A key part of the global manufacturing company Illinois Tool Works, ITW Welding is a group of companies that includes leading manufacturers of metals, equipment, welding components, and accessories for a wide variety of applications.

As ITW Welding grew and thrived, however, success stressed its technology infrastructure. Growing communication needs for its many sites were overwhelming its costly legacy T1 connection. The T1 service, delivering bandwidth in the range of 1.5 Mbps, wasn’t nearly robust enough to handle the rollout of a large-scale Cisco Unity voice over IP (VoIP) system to 1,500 employees across fi ve sites.

That shortcoming had the potential to affect the company’s growth. “As with most businesses, information technology is a critical component of our evolving operations and success going forward,” explains Gaston Brown, systems administrator. “We

needed to access advanced Internet-based applications and integrate more with other business units across the ITW Welding family. Our T1’s limitations stood in the way of our progress.”

Our T1's limitations stood in the way of our progress.

THE SOLUTION: Already a Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) customer since 2005, ITW Welding now turned to TWCBC for an up to 100 Mbps point-topoint Ethernet Private Line (EPL) link from the company’s headquarters to its consumer welding production facilities across town. In addition to security and reliability, the EPL service provides an Ethernet virtual connection that delivers speeds from 5 Mbps up to 10 Gbps. ITW Welding also relies on a TWCBC Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) service to power a site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) between its headquarters and its Appleton, Wisconsin, locations. With a simple phone call, Brown upgraded ITW Welding’s DIA service from 5 Mbps to 20 and then to 25 Mbps. The DIA service provides private, redundant connectivity as well as fast speeds and a robust bandwidth to maximize the performance of VPNs and VoIP services.

THE RESULT: The cost has decreased, and productivity and customer service are measurably improved. • Running VoIP over the new high-speed infrastructure helps cut local and longdistance phone bills. • The growing use of video conferencing between locations helps ITW Welding save on travel costs and boost productivity. • The DIA upgrade answers the growing bandwidth needs of the company’s dispersed sales force and network of 10 US warehouses, as well as the need to increase access to critical applications and data for major remote sites. • ITW Welding is able to maintain customer service at a world-class level. “Having the ability to provide our locations and people high-speed and reliable access to our servers means we’re able to enter and fulfi ll orders accurately and on time,” Brown says. “And being able to keep our service up 24/7/365 is obviously critical to meeting our customers' needs and driving our success. “We need reliable, high-quality connections to help meet all our business needs. Time Warner Cable Business Class makes it easy.”

SHARE YOUR STORY! How did you partner with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology issues? Share your company’s story for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of SOLVE. Visit business.twc.com/nomination to share your story.

I EVER MADE" THE BEST BUSINESS CHANGE

“The only constant in the world is change,” said the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. No doubt change made the guys in the agora uneasy even back then—well before the advent of the global competitiveness, industry consolidation, rapid technological change, and newly empowered consumers that business leaders engage with today.

Nonetheless, many of today’s leaders fi nd change in business exhilarating. As that modern-day philosopher Steve Jobs said, “The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.” Here’s to the business leaders, some of whom you’ll hear from here, who made decisions that changed their companies’ world.

LEADING WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY “In 2008, our health insurance advisory fi rm released version 1.0 of BerniePortal, a web-based benefi ts administration platform. We took a big fi nancial and business risk when developing it because it distracted from other business activities that were profi table—and we had never designed software before. But we saw a need for a platform for employers in the under-500 employee segment that could be built out in 45 minutes. (Most platforms are focused on the 1,000-plus market and require a six-week lead time for buildout.) Six years later, the BerniePortal is the leading platform in a very hot space. It enabled us to get ahead of the competition quickly and gave our business model a more expansive reach.” —Alex Tolbert, CEO, Bernard Health, a healthcare consultancy based in Nashville, TN

5 Spring 2014 FINDING THE COURAGE TO FIRE AND HIRE “My company’s differentiator is that we build modern, eco-friendly homes that exceed the area’s green code by 15 percent. As demand for our services grew, I had to take a hard look at my staff’s capabilities to see if they could keep up with the company’s journey. I realized my staff didn’t have the resources to facilitate the extensive marketing we would need to maintain our growth. With each person, I asked, ‘Considering the dynamics of our growing company, does this person have the potential for longevity here?’ I had to pivot my company by letting go of certain individuals and then hiring fresh, lasting talent. This was the most intelligent business decision I ever made. I now have a staff that refl ects the strength of my company.” —Mayer Dahan, CEO of Prime Five Homes, a full-service real estate development company, Los Angeles, CA CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 >>

BRINGING MANUFACTURING BACK TO THE US “I decided to take our foreign competition head-on by becoming the only one in the industry to make our products in the USA. We offer licensed rubber ducks with an unmatched intricacy in sculpting and painting. The small, hand-painted toy industry that also uses rotational molding was virtually gone from the US and was not easy to bring back because of the level of skill needed, EPA regulations, the disappearance of factories with the proper equipment, and so on.

“I always joked that if I didn’t own the company 100 percent, I would have been fi red.

There was no way I was ‘maximizing shareholder

value’ in the short run! But I knew

in the long run it should put us in a fabulous position, because we would own our niche. We can also make shorter deadlines and do smaller production runs than our competition, and the quality and safety of our items is as good as it gets. The truth is, a lot of people want things that have been made in America. We get a lot of emotional support from consumers, and that’s huge.” —Craig Wolfe, president, CelebriDucks collectible celebrity rubber ducks, San Rafael, CA << CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

RAISING PRICES TO WIN BUSINESS “A few years ago, I was scared to raise our rates, but it ended up being the best thing we have ever done. By increasing our prices, we were able to pay higher wages and thereby attract excellent employees. This solidifi ed our place as a high-end care provider.

“We then began to offer different tiers with different rates of service, enabling us to provide our clients with more targeted service levels. This, in turn, allowed the company to increase our customer base, which resulted in sales growth and a decrease in labor costs as a percentage of revenue. We have now embarked on a nationwide franchising effort.” —Denise Stern, CEO of Let Mommy Sleep, overnight baby nurse agency, Washington, DC

REMAKING A BUSINESS TO MEET THE FUTURE “I hung up my badge as a Maricopa County detention offi cer to pursue a long-held dream of entrepreneurship by starting a successful medical staffi ng agency. However, after one eye-opening visit to a nursing home, I realized there were many people who could and would stay in their own homes if they had access to in-home care. I did some research and saw that the senior population in the US is expected to double to 70 million by 2025. So, I took the risk of changing the nature of my company, though it took every dollar I had and years of my life working 70 hours a week. I opened SYNERGY HomeCare in 1999, and started franchising in 2005. We now have 260 operating units in 42 states.” —Peter Tourian, CEO, SYNERGY HomeCare, franchised senior in-home care agency based in Gilbert, AZ

TAKING A LEAP INTO THE DIGITAL UNKNOWN “The best business change I ever made was going digital before it was cool. At a time when businesses were just on the cusp of discovering the need for these things called ‘websites,’ and advertising agencies like ourselves had their hands full making ads for print and broadcast, we took a big leap— and a huge fi nancial risk—to launch Fingerprint Interactive in 1999, the fi rst digital agency in Philadelphia (and one of the fi rst in the country) for building and marketing websites.

“The risks were abundant, just because there were so many unknowns with digital. What we did know was that we couldn’t do anything quietly. We had to be brazen and let people know what we were really capable of in order to attract business leads and top talent.

“It took a while, and many conversations, sales pitches, and presentations until we had a critical mass of clients who shared our vision for the importance of shifting to digital strategies and tactics. Landing Microsoft as our fi rst client helped with the credibility of our story.

“A mantra that I always try to live by in business is ‘evolve before you have to.’ You only get one shot to get out ahead of the changing landscape. If you hesitate, you get left behind.” —Marc Brownstein, CEO, Brownstein Group, brand communication fi rm, Philadelphia, PA