Whether you're a tourist or long-time resident, if you’ve wandered into a public restroom, a restaurant kitchen or Las Vegas hotel room, you’ve probably come across a Brady Industries product or service.
The family-run janitorial supply company has been in business locally since the late 1940s and provides janitorial products (bathroom soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers, toilet seat covers, among other items) and linen services to the local school system, major Strip operators and numerous other businesses around the valley.
Technology is not a term that comes to mind with a business like Brady. When Stephen Murphy, now the corporate IT director, arrived at the company a little more than a year ago, the long-time IT pro could see that company leaders were struggling with technology.
He described “massive server sprawl” with disparate networks between West Coast offices. There was a need for the IT department to learn how to properly use the equipment it had and phase out obsolete hardware, as well as initiate vendor support offerings that weren’t being used, he said. Ultimately, Murphy consolidated the number of servers by 50 percent while increasing capabilities for all Brady team members.
“It was a very 1980s firefighting IT department. … You spent the day running around putting out fires. Today’s technology is too advanced to do that,” Murphy said.
At its core, Brady is a sales company, and the IT team plays a big part in helping the sales team service customers and grow the long-time family-run business.
With Murphy’s help, the Brady sales force now has anywhere, anytime, any device access to its network and documents. There is also an enterprise-wide document management solution.
Murphy also worked to shrink the technology footprint in the office and workspaces. He decreased the number of bulky desktop workstations and replaced them with tablets, laptops and phones. Murphy also implemented Microsoft’s SharePoint 2013, which allows employees to effectively share business data.
“The main drive is that anybody should be able to access anything from anywhere from any device at any time. If you keep that in mind then you’re probably doing the right thing with technology,” he added.
With Murphy’s help, IT spending dropped by 15 percent in his first six months at Brady, and some of the efficiencies his team put in place also helped the service and repair team boost business by more than 400 percent in the past year.
The IT director has been in the field for more than 20 years and has earned his stripes in the trenches. Murphy remembers tinkering with early model computers in the 1980s as a kid and then applying the computer knowledge he gained as a result of sheer curiosity to a career in the rental car industry.
“I was the guy people would ask ‘can you fix this?’” Murphy recalled.
Some of Murphy’s greatest field training with regards to being fiscally responsible came during the Y2K crisis in 1999 and 2000, when a number of organizations and companies were concerned about major computer system failures as a result of old code not being able to accommodate the year change from the 1900s to the 2000s. The problem wasn’t as bad as anticipated, but Murphy recalls the huge sums of money spent on compliance initiatives.
“IT reports to accounting. … I think that taught us that you can’t just scare people into spending money on technology,” he added.
The technology pro also loves to share the knowledge he has gained through the years with up and coming IT professionals by teaching classes at the Las Vegas campus of DeVry University.
“Teaching a couple nights a week brings me great satisfaction. It keeps me abreast of new developments as well,” he said.