The slurry pump manufacturer relies on Dropbox Business to facilitate mobility and collaboration, leading to faster workflows for employees and better service for global customers.
GIW Minerals' Key Results
Ease of use drives rapid adoption
80% drop in IT tickets related to file sharing
Greater control over sensitive company data
The Challenge
Seeking a better flow of information
Founded in 1891 as a small machine shop, KSB’s GIW Industries designs and manufactures slurry pumps that are sold to customers around the globe under the GIW Minerals brand. As the Grovetown, Georgia company has grown, management realized it needed a way to keep the work process flowing as fluidly as the material that moves through its 20-ton pumps. Dependent on email and FTP sites, employees often struggled with collaborating internally and sending large files containing product specs to customers. Staff members stationed in remote areas where mining occurs sometimes had trouble accessing servers to back up their laptops and download the latest sales materials. “They are anywhere on the planet at any given time, and it makes it hard to back them up efficiently,” says Lucas McCuistian, Supervisor of Server Operations. After a rep from GIW’s hardware supplier Dell — a Dropbox Business strategic partner — suggested the service would meet its needs for storage and centralized file sharing, the company decided to give it a try.
“We’ve seen a massive decrease in requests dealing with email quota sizes or files that need to be shared. They’ve dropped 80% to 90%.”
The Solution
Pumping up collaboration
Now that the KSB company has moved to Dropbox Business, sales reps can spend more time providing service to prospects and less time trying to dig up the information they need, McCuistian says. “Instead of carrying a big folder full of paper or a laptop to a meeting, it allows our sales folks to bring up their data on their phones or tablets,” he says. Product and design teams are using shared folders to collaborate on the AutoCAD and other colossal files that used to choke the email server. Having one centralized location for files means teams no longer end up with four or five versions of the same document. Using Dropbox Business has another benefit: employees in the field can sync — even with low bandwidth connections — site images and videos back with headquarters. “It allows us to troubleshoot problems more quickly,” says Scott Gillum, Product Manager. “I’ve got a guy who is 16 hours ahead of me in Indonesia in a very, very remote location. He can very easily upload all the data that he’s getting and get it back to us just as if he were here.” The Admin Console helps the company keep sensitive information inside the company by making it easy for IT to offboard departing employees and contractors, and remotely wipe any company data off their devices. “To look around at employees and see how they have openly embraced a technology like Dropbox is a testament to how effective and easy to use it is,” Gillum says.
“It allows us to troubleshoot problems more quickly. I’ve got a guy who is 16 hours ahead of me in Indonesia in a very, very remote location. He can very easily upload all the data that he’s getting and get it back to us just as if he were here.”
The Results
Freeing up IT and employees
Dropbox Business is making work much easier for employees, says McCuistian. The company was able to reduce the maximum file sizes for external emails from 50 MB to 10 MB, as employees now use the service to share large files both internally and externally. The change has given IT more time to focus on strategic projects, he adds. “We’ve seen a massive decrease in requests dealing with email quota sizes or files that need to be shared,” McCuistian says. “They’ve dropped 80% to 90%.” Charlie Stone, VP of Sales and Marketing, says Dropbox is helping us keep pace with the speed of the global mining business. “We don’t have to man this office 24/7,” he says. “We use Dropbox to enable people on the other side of the world to get the information they need.”
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