Delta Systems Case study

Virtual CIO and Managed IT Services

Delta Systems is a manufacturer and supplier of components for the outdoor power equipment industry. Among Delta Systems’ largest customers are some Fortune 50 companies. Clearly, there is no room for this organization to be anything other than on the top of their game. They have many clients depending on them.

Mike Jeziorski, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Delta Systems, is responsible for finance, HR, and information technology. Their path to Sikich began about 15 years ago when they were a client of a company acquired by Sikich. When the organization returned to Sikich for their assurance and tax work, the assurance team began to talk about the IT services that Sikich offers as well.

IT Challenges Lead to a Call for Help

Most organization can relate to internal challenges. What caused Delta Systems to make the call to Sikich IT services for help? They were experiencing several issues within their information technology structure. Inconsistent backups, an e-mail exchange that kept going down (sometimes going a couple days without e-mail, a disastrous event for a business like this), and concerns about overall network security and potential hacking into their network lead Jeziorski to IT conversations with Sikich. Some turnover occurred in the Delta Systems IT team cutting it from four people down to two.

Understandably feeling stretched too thin, Jeziorski knew exactly who he wanted to call to give his team a hand.

Delta Systems Partners with Sikich for Critical IT Services

Prior to engaging Sikich for IT services, Delta Systems had used some other local companies from a network administration standpoint, and still had their problems with inconsistent backups and e-mail crashing. Based on his comfort level with Sikich from an assurance and tax standpoint, Jeziorski was confident Sikich would be a good fit to be their go-to IT service partner as well.

Sikich Managed IT Services Solves Important Challenges

Sikich jumped in to help Delta Systems solve several of their challenges. From an IT standpoint, there now is stability within the network, and there’s a comfort level among the people inside this building and especially with the senior management team that backups are being properly administered.

Delta Systems now benefits from a very reliable system both from an e-mail standpoint and an overall network system standpoint. Company leadership has a stronger peace of mind that there’s a higher level of security within their network.

The transition to bring in Sikich went very smooth. There was a strong sense of urgency. Although Delta Systems experienced some turnover in their department, Sikich had the expertise in the areas they needed for an IT partner to come in and help. Sikich came on board and immediately dug in, made an analysis of the system, understood where the weaknesses were and addressed them right away. Delta Systems could lock down the system almost that same day to ensure that there’d be no other breaches happening.

“Prior providers were just fixing our computers and making sure our servers were up and running. Sikich, however, took the time to understand our business and asked the manager team questions about where we wanted to be in the future”

– Mike Jerziorski, SVP and CFO

The Impact of a Virtual CIO and IT Managed Services

One of the biggest impacts that the senior management team has seen in Sikich managed services is the virtual CIO that is offered. “What we like is they understand our business more and more with each visit they have with our quarterly business reviews and they’re able to guide us,” stated Jeziorski and continued, “They understand what direction we want to go in from a technology standpoint, and they’re able to guide us and give us recommendations on systems, ratifications, or hardware that we’re going to need to be able to achieve our goals form a technology standpoint.”

Technology is high on Mike Jeziorski’s priority list for Delta Systems. When asked what was personally impactful for him he shard, “Working with Sikich as a virtual CIO has been a real benefit for us and they understand our business and where we want to go, we gave them a very detailed plan from an ERP standpoint and a technology standpoint. In fact, we’ve got a management team here that’s fully embraced, manufacturing 4.0 and the Internet of Things. The Sikich team now understands that and they’ve taken that and pretty much run with it. They’re structuring a plan to help us achieve manufacturing 4.0 in the future.”

Further impact can be felt at the organization with ease of use felt across the team. Working remotely, their staff no longer must go through a VPN. They can access it in the cloud at any point in time, anywhere they’re at. Jeziorski feels that’s the biggest benefit Delta Systems has seen so far.

Embracing Manufacturing 4.0

As a manufacturing company, Delta Systems has embraced Manufacturing 4.0 and the Internet of Things. From a technology standpoint, on their production floor their goal is to have a paperless work environment and totally digitize the production floor. That goal is going to involve a great deal of investment and technology and guidance, and the ownership and senior management team fully supports that. Delta Systems will be relying a lot of Sikich going forward for their initiative for Manufacturing 4.0.

“We realize IT is not a core competency for us,” shared Jeziorski, “and so we look to folks like Dustin and his team at Sikich to help us put together a path and a direction to get us to what we would consider Manufacturing 4.0.”

Why Is Sikich the Managed IT Services Partner of Choice?

Choosing the right IT partner is critical for any organization, especially for any business facing IT challenges such as Delta Systems experienced. What sets Sikich IT services apart from the rest? “One of the biggest reasons why we selected Sikich from a manage service standpoint versus the people we used in the past,” stated Jeziorski, “is because the prior providers were just fixing our computers and making sure our servers were up and running. Sikich, however, understands… they went and took the time to understand our business and asked the manager team questions about where we wanted to be in the future. That gave them a better understanding of our business, of our direction and helped them to be able to support us in a much better fashion than prior providers.”

Jeziorski, continued to share, “When a company comes to the realization that IT is not their core competency, and they feel that their resources can be better used within building their business and growing their business, I think that’s the time to consider looking at Sikich for manage services.”

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