The Background
Founded in 1972, Lockhart Chemical Company is a specialty chemical manufacturer with locations near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Flint, Michigan. In addition to its 60 employees, Lockhart is represented by a network of stocking distributors as well as direct marketing personnel serving the Metalworking and Coating markets worldwide.
The Challenge
This Pennsylvania-based manufacturer had three office locations that were connected via point-to-point T1 lines. The company was experiencing high monthly fees and maintenance support costs for each of the three lines. As Lockhart’s IT partner, Nortec proactively evaluated the situation, and proposed a secure, significantly cheaper solution that would eliminate all of those costs. By utilizing the internet and creating site-to-site VPN connections, the three Lockhart offices would remain securely connected and would also take the company’s telecom monthly expenditures from thousands of dollars to hundreds.
The Solution
After getting the go-ahead from Lockhart, Nortec established an implementation plan and schedule. Nortec faced a sizeable challenge from the start, as Lockhart would need to terminate its existing telecomm contracts and this could result in sizeable termination fees. However, Nortec was able to negotiate on Lockhart’s behalf and was able to terminate those existing contracts with zero penalties to Lockhart.
Nortec procured the necessary hardware and began implementing the new solution while the existing solution was still in place. Eric Williams of Nortec says, “Lockhart was still under contract for the T1 lines during the implementation, so this plan gave Lockhart a safety net in case the company had second thoughts about the new solution and wanted to go back to the T1 lines without incurring any re-connection fees.”
Nortec also upgraded Lockhart’s firewall technology at one office and implemented an industry-standard firewall solution at the other two locations. The VPN solution and related upgrades were executed in the span of just two weeks.
Benefits
Lockhart’s business has not skipped a beat. The firm is experiencing the same performance as the old solution, but the new solution gives Lockhart more flexibility in terms of network access and control, in addition to being significantly cheaper. Williams notes, “As Lockhart’s consulting partner, we knew where Lockhart was wasting money and how we could help them save significantly – and in this economy, any cost savings is huge.”