Edwards had chosen local technology consulting firm Praxis Computing to set
up a system for the company’s bookkeeping and other corporate functions sev-
eral years earlier. Based upon the success of those systems, Edwards suggested
to Collins that Praxis would be an ideal choice to integrate new technology
into his expansion plan for Shorewood. Edwards and Collins sat down with
Jeff Roback of Praxis and discussed how technology could be applied to
Shorewood’s business to help it stay competitive. He liked that Praxis looked
for long-term relationships with its clients and builds a team environment.
“Praxis is not merely a reseller,” notes Collins. “They are as excited as we
are about applying technology to make our business better, and Jeff was way
ahead of the curve. I was thinking in terms of getting all agents productive on
their laptops and desktops. Jeff wanted to tie all of the offices together and
make new information available to everyone immediately and simultaneously.”
“I looked at the size of Shorewood’s market and the potential there, and with
the price of LANs and WANs coming down it was the reasonable thing to
do,” said Roback. “We already had a strong database in the bookkeeping
department—why not push that database out into other offices with a WAN
and tie agents together using the Internet?” Just as Shorewood’s business was
exploding, the price points of a WAN solution were low enough to make it
an attractive solution.
Teams With Cisco Partner to Stay Ahead in Aggressive Market
Roback and his team went through a standard needs analysis for Shorewood,
examining questions such as what was Shorewood’s capability for maintaining
equipment internally? What were the performance expectations? Would there
be any resistance from agents on introducing a new system? They bounced a
few technical questions off of the Cisco representative to ensure the solution
they had mind would work as planned.
Praxis could see where the Internet and associated technology were going, and
proposed a system that would create a WAN among Shorewood’s five offices
with T1 Internet access. The firm would host its own Web server and a new
email system would be introduced that would give everyone access internally
or externally.
“I really appreciate that Cisco is playing a role here,” said Collins. “It was very
reassuring to know this new system was going to be quality products from top
to bottom.”
Collins and Roback decided on a phased rollout to be sensitive to the agents’
resistance to a new system. “They needed to ease into the new process,” said
Collins. “Many of them felt like business is great so why make me learn to do
things another way?” Roback also had to gear his thinking to an elementary
level for the Shorewood employees, right down to selecting
the hardware.
