CLIENT: NUSTAR ENERGYL.P.

NuStar Energy L.P. is a publicly traded, limited partnership based in San Antonio, with 8,433 miles of pipeline; 84 terminal and storage facilities that store and distribute crude oil, refined products and specialty liquids; and two asphalt refineries and a fuels refinery with a combined throughput capacity of 118,500 barrels per day.

The partnership’s combined system has approximately 96 million barrels of storage capacity. One of the largest asphalt refiners and marketers in the U.S. and the second largest independent liquids terminal operator in the nation, NuStar has operations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Turkey.

NuStar Energy conducts primary operations from their headquarters location in San Antonio, TX. This campus houses in excess of 500 employees and support staff in two buildings. Construction of a new headquarters building is scheduled for completion in late 2012 and will provide office space and facilities support for almost 800.

AREA OF FOCUS

Onsite and Offsite IT Help Desk Support, Level 1 & 2 Onsite workstation support, Back office server systems monitoring, patching, & maintenance.

CHALLENGE

Client required creation and implementation of a complete 24×7 Help Desk solution including phone support, email requests, live chat support for approximately 2,000 end users and 1850 workstations worldwide. The solution had to be primarily housed onsite at the NuStar Headquarters and needed to provide the ability to respond to break/fix requests, and include a back office component to provide server monitoring, patching, and emergency response for over 400 servers in both physical and virtual environments.

SERVICES PROVIDED

Beginning in May of 2012, our staff began preliminary operations at the NuStar HQ location. Working with NuStar IT staff we were able to design, plan, and implement phone, process, and workstation solutions for both onsite and back office support. We were able to achieve full implementation and go live by June 1st with immediate positive results.

In addition, our team provides level 1 &2 “boots-on-the-ground” workstation and multi-function printer support for 600 plus users and 550 workstations at the headquarters campus. Since this was a startup operation, it was also necessary to work with the client to plan, implement, and document all support processes which would be used to provide the required level of service.

Our back office component presented significant cost savings to the client and offered the ability to provide 24×7 server monitoring, patching, and after hours/weekend phone support. In order to achieve transparency for company staff, we developed a solution using Cisco VPN gateways and access to virtual workstations located on the NuStar network. This allowed users a seamless way to contact the service desk using 4-digit dialing. Virtual workstations were selected as the preferred support platform for back office support, which allows NuStar IT staff control of operating system, workstation settings, and installed applications. This decision eliminates downtime and the requirement for hardware support at a distant location. The service provided by Y&L has allowed for a dramatic increase in end user satisfaction, greatly reduced response time to resolve user reported technology issues, and significant support cost savings for the organization. Within the first three months of operation, our team was able to resolve almost three times the number of incidents reported by the organization’s previous help desk solution. Using a collaborative approach to systems development, Y&L has been able to develop and implement a flexible, reliable, and effective help desk solution for the client in an extremely short time frame.

IT SERVICE DESK AND BACK OFFICE SUPPORT HIGHLIGHTS