Battery Innovation Center (BIC).

The Battery Innovation Center (BIC)in Newberry, Indiana, has a “boom room” where they can test to failure batteries and see what happens. It’s one of the many unique innovation processes at BIC, which helps government agencies and commercial enterprises develop, prototype, validate, and manufacture cutting-edge energy storage technology for a vast array of applications.

In recent years, helping customers maximize their time at BIC was becoming more difficult. Although BIC employed a technology management company, many infrastructure issues were still fractured, issue laden, and limiting capability. Employees had been working to make the best of the current setups, but did not have the time nor the broader capability to handle the IT issues that were hindering the development and scale-up process and also frustrating clients.

The solution for BIC had to include a number of elements, including:

• Ongoing systems management and oversight
• Critical Up-time priority and responsiveness
• Facility-specific security and safety solutions

Matrix Integration proposed a MiAssurance service offering, which is a process driven, highly responsive, ongoing service plan dedicated to the customer’s needs. The process began with a 45-day onboarding period, where a Matrix Client Advocate worked onsite with BIC’s staff to assess their current technology and draft a roadmap to shift management responsibility to Matrix.

After the assessment, BIC decided to hire Matrix for several security projects, including installing equipment direct access points, updated virtual servers for lab, camera and badge system, electronic room scheduling kiosk with Microsoft Outlook integration, Cisco Meraki network switching and wireless access points, priority help-desk to ensure IT related items are resolved same call/same day, a roadmap of business and security needs along with future projects; ie: Matrix’s MiConnection solution with a “visual paging” system, which alerts employees of security alerts with different colors of flashing lights in the facility.

After 45 days, the onboarding period led to a smooth transition when the agreement went “live.” Today, all of BICs network infrastructure, including management of the new security systems, is a part of the organization’s MiAssurance agreement with Matrix Integration. Matrix staff members are fully trained on BIC’s needs and manage all their vendors. For example, if BIC has a problem with its database, the BIC employee calls Matrix, and Matrix works with the database vendor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

In the long-term, Matrix and BIC plan to work together to monitor and manage product lifecycles as well as harden security measures. Overall, BIC is already experiencing benefits such as:

• Reliable, continuous service and support for clients
• Consistent, predictable IT management invoices from Matrix, which are based on a per-user cost
• No staff time wasted dealing with technology or security issues