Order of Operations: Moving and Upgrading the Local 562 Union Network

“It was meant to be.”

This is how Megan Branham, Executive Assistant at Plumbers & Pipefitters Local Union 562, describes the Union’s partnership with Anderson Technologies. The organization was in the process of planning a company-wide move to upgraded facilities and wanted to upgrade their IT at the same time.

Local 562 is split into two distinct halves: Union and Welfare Educational Fund (WEF). Branham’s focus was on the Union side of the organization, but the technology on the WEF side needed to improve as well. The two halves work hand-in-hand, so upgrading technology on both sides was a must. And since Local 562 is growing, they needed more than the one-man IT team that previously managed its systems.

“I knew from the beginning it was an enormous job,” Branham says. “We needed something different, and we needed someone to understand the situation they were walking into.”

Finding the Right Fit

An organization as large as Local 562 requires substantial deliberation when choosing a new vendor to partner with. They gathered quotes from many different managed services providers before making a decision. Many IT vendors had been recommended to various high-level employees, and narrowing down candidates wasn’t an easy process.

Branham knew from her experience troubleshooting Local 562’s day-to-day IT problems that they were looking for a partner that could tackle both the network overhaul required by the move and the everyday “What is XYZ?” questions.

One of the biggest factors was how the new IT vendor would mesh with her team. “You could say we have a lot of strong personalities,” Branham says with a laugh. Many organizations, both large and small, encounter resistance to change at some level; Local 562 was no different.

“From the time we met Mark [Anderson], he was just very calm,” she recalls. “He really understood where I was coming from.” Not all vendors Branham considered had the same presence of mind. “I didn’t get that same feeling from the other companies,” she says. “It felt more like they would have come in, done things the way they thought it should be done, and we’d have to figure it out from there. This is a big deal when you’ve got so many people who are used to doing everything a certain way.”

Anderson Technologies focuses on making its clients an active part of the planning and implementation process, especially during a project when a new partner could easily take control from Local 562’s employees. “Mark [Anderson] also knew that it was important that we were an intricate part of designing how it was going to be, not to change everything we already had,” Branham says. “I felt like every single one of the staff at Anderson [Technologies] was very responsive to that.”

Managing Expectations

Once the partnership with Anderson Technologies was approved, planning for the move could proceed. The opportunity to take a fresh look at Local 562’s current technological status couldn’t be missed. Anderson Technologies and Local 562 together examined what could be improved – or completely restructured.
“I knew our security was not up to par,” Branham says. With emerging cyber security threats came the importance of an outside team to monitor Local 562’s safety. “I felt it was important to have that third party doing all that for us too; not that it’s all them, but they’re helping us find the right ways to do things.”

A study of Local 562’s dynamics helped Anderson Technologies determine the organization’s greatest needs, even when they were difficult to quantify. While each half of the Union performs some functions in conjunction, separate responsibilities needed to be divided. Branham describes it as “spreading everything apart but still making it easy to work together.” Previous IT solutions had muddled that line. Local 562’s sole business manager delegates operations to directors in the two departments. All of Local 562’s digital infrastructure was housed on one network.

The “separate-but-together” end goal split Union and WEF into their own individual server environments but consolidated all employees under one email domain—uniting the two departments. “I knew that there was a way for us to streamline all these things,” Branham says.

Moving the Operation

The physical move itself was a source of colossal stress for every employee of Local 562. “The Anderson [Technologies] team was very calm, and that’s really what we needed ,” Branham says, “because there was a lot of anxiety on the side of everyone here.” During the week-long move from a property in North St. Louis County to one that’s twenty miles west, Anderson Technologies was on-site through the weekend to create new separate domains, install new firewalls, configure the new servers, migrate user profiles, transfer server data, and put out any fires that happened to arise.

Branham describes how the Anderson Technologies team took every little problem in stride: they “kept it smooth and comfortable, and it was a good process and good flow the way everything worked. [The team was] extremely flexible and that made a big difference in the way that people accepted the change, too.”

Coping with the technical logistics of the move was an anticipated challenge. Branham and the rest of Local 562’s employees expected to be unable to use their computers for an extended period of time during the ten-day move. Operations were planned to resume fully the following week. “I expected we would be back up running on Monday [a week into the move] for sure, hopefully it would get done over the weekend,” Branham recalls, “and I was using my computer on Friday morning. . . . I was floored.” Reducing Local 562’s planned downtime by several days allowed them to adjust to the move and return to work faster than expected.

Anderson Technologies’ partnership with Local 562 continues with dedicated ongoing managed services. “Everything has been very strategically done in a way that I know that it was the right choice for us,” Branham says of Local’s 562’s teaming up with Anderson Technologies for the big move and beyond. “Just the other day, one of our guys was saying to one of the gentlemen from Anderson [Technologies] about how “he never remembers his passwords, etc.” so Eric gave me the name of the program to look into. Just little things like that . . . to make our lives easier.”

If your business is ready to move from outdated headquarters, technology, or methodology, contact Anderson Technologies today for a free consultation.