How Essex County trusted SHI to save $900k in yearly software spend

Video Transcript: Essex County trusted SHI to help them save $900k in yearly software spend

I can’t keep saying it, right? We work with other vendors that I think are very good, but SHI does really play a strong backbone for us.

My name is Carl Hunte. I’m the Assistant County Administrator and also the Chief Information Officer at Essex County. My role here, one, is to take care of technology, bring in new technology – advanced technology – and also to take care of security and cybersecurity.

I started at Essex County in 2017, so I’ve been here 6 years. And during that time, we have advanced a lot in technology. When I came here first, we were an AS400 shop. So, in the Enterprise world, you are charging for services, right? So, what you’re looking at is providing the best service at a cost-effective manner so you can resell it. So as you look at Government now, right, do you have the money and the resources to do that? No. We have a skeleton staff. We can’t go and look at taxpayers’ dollars to do this type of research – even though it’s for their benefit and for their good.

This is where, for example, I SHI and [Account Executive] John Turba a lot, right? So I use him as my – coming from the Enterprise world – let me focus on that. You have a team that can do research, go knock on doors, bring equipment in, do all that research. You have the money to do that spend, to make sure you’re locking down your system the correct way, because of course you’re supporting customers, so you want to make sure that all these things are done correctly.

Well one of the best $8,000 Essex County has ever spent was getting together with SHI to audit a company we were using. This $8,000 allowed them to come and work with us and we were able to save around $900,000 of our yearly bill.

Another great project we worked with SHI was when we were rolling out upgrading our firewall, our security system. During our negotiation with our provider, we were able to negotiate the software piece of it that allowed us to rollout the software to any cities within the county that would like to use it. Those cities just have to go and purchase the hardware to move forward. But the software, as everyone knows, is the most expensive piece of any security system.

John [Turba] having my back is good, right? I feel comfortable. John and I have a friendship now, right, over the years. So, if you don’t have people in your organization, in your entity, in this world – especially the technology world – that has your back today to make sure that they see you going off in the wrong tangent, to say, “Hey Carl! Wake up!” Right? “What are doing?” Right? “Did you look at this?”

We need that today. So in the Enterprise world, you have somebody who actually does that. To me, SHI is a critical part of my team today. I mean, all my team knows John, knows different folks – Kyle – different people within SHI today. It’s part of an extension of the arm of our technology department today.

As a client of SHI, keep up the good work. I know SHI is a big, large company. But at the same time, we get personalized service from them. So please, you know, continue with that personalized service.