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Based in the greater Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area, En-Net is a leading supplier of information technology solutions to public sector entities across the U.S., including federal, state and local governments. Dedicated to building long-term relationships with its customers, En-Net offers cutting-edge software, security solutions and a comprehensive range of technology products.
Read how Eaton and En-Net teamed up to help a federal agency upgrade its exisiting UPS solutions during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to shut down much of the country, one of En-Net’s customers — a prominent federal government agency — faced a serious challenge. Throughout its expansive facility, the organization had begun to roll out a refresh of hundreds of Eaton® 9SX uninterruptible power systems (UPSs) but was stopped in its tracks amid pandemic-related staffing and scheduling restrictions.
Prior to the pandemic, En-Net and Eaton representatives had worked together to match the optimal UPS to the customer’s needs, as well as secure the most attractive price point through Eaton’s deal registration program. The agency had selected the 9SX to safeguard a wide variety of vital equipment and operations, in large part due to the model’s robust online double-conversion topology, zero transfer time to battery, continuous filtering of power and internal automatic static bypass. In addition to delivering consistently reliable performance, the 9SX UPS also provides up to 28 percent more wattage compared to traditional UPSs, allowing the agency to connect more devices while leaving room for expanding IT systems.
Although the decision to standardize on the 9SX was made prior to the emergence of COVID-19, shutdown measures instigated by the unanticipated pandemic resulted in limited staffing and scheduling capabilities for the agency’s on-site shipping and receiving team, which made it impossible to continue delivering the 9SX units. Further complicating the deployment was the agency’s inability to remove the end-of-life UPSs. Although the new backup power solution was necessary to ensure continued uptime, the customer didn’t have the storage capabilities to house the retired units or the manpower to safely and ecologically recycle them. As a result, the agency was left with no way to complete its UPS refresh — that is, until the powerful partnership of En-Net and Eaton intervened.
“You know you have a partnership that gives you a real advantage when your Eaton team is willing to cover all the distance between technical expert to trusted advisor to delivery guy to recycler of UPS carcasses. Eaton is best-in-class in understanding and adapting to the challenges of channel partners.”
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Working with its Eaton account manager, the team at En-Net developed an innovative and strategic plan to facilitate the logistics of delivery during the pandemic, as well as dispose of the UPSs being pulled out of service. “We overcame the challenges by becoming an ‘on-call’ delivery and removal service,” explains Kyle Yost, president of En-Net.
Under the proposal — which En-Net deemed the ‘white glove/dirty glove’ solution — as each existing UPS reached its end-of-life, En-Net would deliver a replacement. Every UPS would be hand-delivered by ‘white-glove’ to its specific location within the customer’s facility. Then, after the new unit was installed, the team would swap its ‘white gloves’ with ‘dirty gloves’ to complete the removal and recycling process.
“The building staff would bring the old UPSs to the facility’s dock area and after we made our delivery of UPSs for the day, we would remove the old batteries from the end-of-life UPSs and make separate piles in a U-Haul truck,” Yost explains. The team would stock batteries on one side of the truck, and UPS shells on the other. “Then it was off to the recycling center, where the batteries were sorted to be recycled,” Yost says. The remaining UPS shells were — quite literally — thrown from the truck into a separate recycling pile, sparking a rather unconventional contest.
“It’s a unique channel partner and manufacturer team-building exercise to have a UPS-throwing competition at a recycling center,” Yost says with a laugh. “We made sure that Mike, our Eaton account manager, always won!”
The ultimate winner, of course, was the government agency. Yost credits much of the success of the challenging venture to the advantages En-Net receives from being an Eaton partner.
“When you have an account manager who meets and coordinates with you and your customer to ensure the best solution for their needs, works with you through deal registration and pricing, and then helps you deliver and remove UPSs to and from that same customer, you know you have something special,”
Ultimately, En-Net was not only able to meet the technology demands of its customer, but also solve a difficult logistical problem created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most importantly, the solution kept the networks and labs of the government agency protected with Eaton’s cutting-edge back up power solutions.
“The white glove/dirty glove solution underscores two of En-Net’s core philosophies — lead with Eaton, and every problem is an opportunity,” Yost points out. “The fact that this particular solution worked so well is a credit to Cory Barnes, En-Net’s strategic account manager, and Mike O’Donnell, our Eaton account manager. It really highlights Eaton’s fantastic support of its partners.”
Having delivered more than 250 9SX units to date, En-Net is continuing its ‘white glove/dirty glove’ approach for as long as the customer desires. Similarly, En-Net views its partnership with Eaton as long-term.
