Genuine Technology Group helps Crimson Renewable Energy get a handle on sprawling infrastructure
Who is Crimson Renewable Energy?
Crimson Renewable Energy is the largest producer of high-quality, ultra-low carbon biodiesel on the west cost of the USA. Crimson collects used cooking oil, refines it into biodiesel, and delivers that fuel to customers – and it’s one of the only companies that can manage the entire process in-house. Organizations from major oil companies, fuel wholesalers, and truck stop operators all use Crimson Renewables’ fuels to help keep their fleets and operations running, while reducing their carbon footprint.
The challenge – IT growing pains
With 300 IT users in the company, 200 of whom are on the road most of the time, IT plays a vital role in keeping Crimson running smoothly and efficiently. But a growth strategy that saw Crimson acquire a dozen companies in three years had created an IT infrastructure made up of a range of different systems, threatening future growth. Paul Wogan, CIO at Crimson, says:
“Reliable IT is essential for us to deliver great service and support to our customers, but also to keep our business functioning. Our service engineers collecting oil from restaurants, for example, have to take pictures and produce reports on mobile devices – if they can’t access their systems, they can’t work.”
The solution – a Genuine partnership with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) that cares
Paul knew that rationalizing Crimson’s IT infrastructure wasn’t something the team should handle alone – their core competencies were in application development and continually improving the service Crimson delivers to customers and staff. Paul explains, “I wanted a partner who could handle this project for us – and look after our systems in the long term – so my team could get on with what they’re best at.”
Paul’s experience told him that an MSP was what was needed – and when he met with Genuine Technology Group, he knew he’d found an MSP who he could work with.
“I was really impressed with what Genuine has to offer in terms of on-site services, their project services, and their ability to take ownership of our entire environment going forward.”
Genuine Technology now provides nearly all of Crimson’s IT services, other than the development side of things that Paul’s team already excels at. That includes supporting the in-house team to offer a 24/7 support service desk, end user support, hardware lifecycle management, and undertaking projects to keep Crimson’s IT infrastructure performing at its best.
The results – infrastructure that’s fit for the future
Since starting to work with Crimson, Genuine has undertaken several projects, including standardizing employee laptops devices, and improving the network at one of Crimson’s 55-acre biodiesel plants.
Crucially for Crimson, Genuine has improved the reliability of its systems, protecting future growth plans. “The number of outages has gone down dramatically,” Paul comments, “and when we do have outages, they’re fixed much faster than before.”
With remote desktop management rolled out across the organization, Crimson can ensure all its users have a consistently good experience on their work devices – wherever they are – and the IT team can handle updates and device management centrally too.
Best of all for Paul, though, is that he knows Genuine are always looking out for Crimson’s IT – so he doesn’t have to. “The peace of mind I get from knowing that Genuine are handling the day-to-day management of our network is so valuable. Now that we’ve been working together for a while, I can be pretty hands-off with them, and that means I can focus on work that helps Crimson continue to lead in our field.”
In fact, Paul is so impressed with Genuine that he’s recommended them to two other organizations – both of whom are now happy customers.
“One of them said to me that they’d never go back to another provider now that they’ve worked with Genuine,” Paul says, “and in my view, they’ve absolutely earned that praise.”