George Nites
Network Administrator
Product(s): iQ: Internet Port
Industry: Manufacturing
Cleveland Steel Container is in the business of steel pails, containing everything from hazardous materials to cosmetics. Cleveland Steel partners with customers to plan, design, produce and deliver the steel pail that meets the shipping and marketing needs of a product backed by world class customer service.
Business Need
"Since I've been here--I'm going on three years--we have grown a couple of warehouses, and we've most recently acquired a company down in Atlanta; that is another warehouse distribution point for us that was a competitor that we acquired, so that acquisition, gave us a lot more territory. I mean, it gave us like five other states that we cover out of that warehouse. Later this year, we're going to be building a new manufacturing facility in Texas, and that will allow us to cover the South pretty much because that will give us that whole new market.
Our main driving force is our Oracle system for accounting and manufacturing; that basically drives the company, and that connectivity is done via Internet ports, and then we use private ports for tunneling e-mail and stuff like that between the sites."
Why Qwest
"The reason I went and continued with Qwest was just one point of reference, one billing contact, one bill at the end of every month, and just the range of services that were available. There's very, very strong support, and what's really beneficial to me is the proactiveness. I get e-mail alerts, whether that comes to my handheld or at my desktop; just proactive alerts of network outages, and that does help a lot because I can let my users know if there will be any impact to them--I can let them know ahead of time instead of being caught off guard. That is a great tool. It's not a phone call that could get dumped into voicemail or something; e-mail really works well for me, and with that e-mail, I can go out to check my equipment to see if it's up and running and then if not, then I can make a call to escalate with Qwest's technicians so they can further investigate."
Customer Service
"Customer service has been great from a tech support standpoint; even from a sales standpoint. I mean, very responsive. Usually when I make that call, they will go out and do what they need to do and they will follow up with me if they need to get the LEC involved or somebody out to the site. They do follow up with a timeframe and it is one person that's getting back to me. With big companies, there's layers and sometimes there's a little bit of a lag between things, but for the most part, I've been very, very satisfied. It's pleasant and I'm very happy."
