Executive Overview 

Our client is a high-growth alternative asset manager who invests in a wide range of global business to fund their growth using many forms of structured capital. Their 30+ years of experience and more than 2,000 employees across numerous offices allows them to move quickly to take advantage of favorable market conditions. With a new influx of investment capital to the firm, they needed to expand their NYC office footprint to accommodate more than 200 new traders and research analysts.  

The Challenge   

One of the challenges TDS faced with supporting this new growth initiative was helping our client get a more “standard workstation build” across the NYC environment. The objectives would be to give the existing professionals a better user experience & added functionality from new software solutions, while setting the platform for easier rollout out to the new users as they are onboarded. 

Additionally, to accommodate the planned hiring spree, the NYC office footprint would need to be expanded. After looking at multiple locations across the city, our client was able to secure a new floor in their existing building which would better help maintain the culture of the NYC firm.  

The Solution 

Working with the IT and Facilities team, TDS started developing the design and build-out plan for the new office. Given the extended lead times for procuring much of the required materials, we needed to work very closely with the outside vendors to ensure the new office build was proceeding on schedule and on budget. Another critical requirement was getting both permission & access from the building owner to allow us to “tie” the new floor to our client’s current office environment to enable the firm to operate on one network – making it easier to monitor and maintain.  

While the office build continued progressing, we conducted user interviews with every type of employee in the NY office: traders, analysts, senior executives, support personnel, etc. This allowed us to work with the IT and Network team to develop three standard workstation builds/upgrades to rollout. As part of the planned user-experience upgrade TDS also helped with a technology refresh in the conference rooms and common spaces – larger LCD screens, updated video and audio platforms, and leading-edge unified communication services. 

The Results 

With a move-in date scheduled for the new office, TDS was able to work alongside the interior vendors to finish up their work while we ensured the technology infrastructure was in place, tested and ready for users: network access, WiFi, low voltage cabling, building management systems, etc.  

Using the newly developed onboarding platform, TDS and the client’s systems & procurement teams worked closely together to welcome the newly hired professionals over the course of multiple hiring waves. TDS remained on site for ad-hoc support as well as to schedule weekly training sessions with professionals to demonstrate new features in both the new workstation builds and the conference rooms. Finally, the new platform allowed us to publish user guides, FAQs and best practices for the professionals to “self-serve” as needed through their corporate intranet.  

Today TDS remains on-site in the NYC office providing a level of continuity and support that the client now considers critical to their business operations. 

Executive Overview 

Our long-term client, a Quantitative Trading firm with more than 22,000 employees and offices in 45 countries had an aggressive “Return to Office” (RTO) program that needed to be executed in 90 days. Additionally, they were planning to aggressively hire more staff and required all office locations to be able to handle these new resources. 

The Challenge   

Quantitative Trading professionals have specific technology needs relative to their desktop set-ups: multiple large format monitors, access to market data displays, proximity to fellow team members, etc. Getting the new layout of the offices correct, developing “run-books” to schedule and execute all these activities, and having the man-power to move existing workstations, set up new locations and maximize every available square inch were all critical items in assuring a successful RTO program.  

The Solution 

The TDS team worked closely with our client’s technology, human resources, and facilities personnel to develop a pilot RTO program for their main office in New York City. This pilot program would serve as the backbone for the broader rollout to the other office – giving local employees a runbook with objectives, timelines, and requirements to successfully achieve their local RTO program. 

Our team surveyed the NY office and worked to match the new reconfigured layout to the various roles that the returning professionals played. We also worked to re-imagine unused or underutilized space to retrofit these locations for the planned new hires. This included converting conference rooms into classroom style layouts for better personnel density. 

The next step was to develop move waves to ensure we were executing an efficient program with the available TDS and client personnel. Many of these move waves needed to occur after hours and on during weekends as the office did have traders working on site most workdays.  

Working with building personnel, we were also able to schedule deliveries of new IT and office equipment to prep the areas for the new personnel. This activity also needed to occur off hours as installation activities can often be noisy and disruptive to on-site employees.  

As the main RTO activities were ramping up in NYC, our program called for splitting the on-site teams in “specialist” groups to have each group focus on one activity. This method allowed daily milestones to be met more effectively and with less personnel hours. 

The Results 

The NYC RTO program was successfully completed on time and on budget, despite delays in supply chain materials for the new workstations. The TDS team is now managing day-to-day change requests post RTO, ensuring the established workflow is being followed and documented in proper change management fashion. The new employees are being onboarded and TDS manages those requests to ensure the user experience is seamless and follows our client’s best-practices.  

We have now been working for branch offices to take them through the logistics for their own RTO program, and expect to be participating in and leading a number of those programs throughout the next few months. 

Executive Overview 

Our client is one of the largest financial services firms in the world. This 150-year-old firm offers the broadest types of services – from investment and commercial banking, consumer and retail offerings, wealth management, investor services for asset managers and capital market. With nearly 90,000 employees worldwide and offices in most countries, they have one of the most complex IT platforms to support these many varied business units. They rely on TDS for myriad IT programs and support activities in North America, 

The Challenge   

Initially TDS was engaged to support a 1,400+ person office relocation from New York City to a new to be built office in New Jersey. Concurrent to this build out and office relocation, the Network, Data Center and Technology teams were planning to make critical upgrades to the back-end infrastructure focusing on improving the user experience through new PC & VDI technologies, leading edge collaboration tools, state of the art security and storage systems, and public cloud services.  

With multiple disciplines from each of the support services teams needed to work seamlessly – while meeting critical project deadlines – coordination was a must as engineers and specialist were located in various locations and time zones. With a must move date 12 months ahead, everything was in the critical path and there was no room for dates to slip.  

The Solution 

At project inception, TDS gathered the key stakeholders together to outline the program goals and critical success factors. After presenting the approach to senior management and getting approval to move forward, TDS stood up a cloud-based Project Management Office platform to schedule and track progress, flag & highlight critical areas that might be a challenge for the team and provide detailed progress reports for the team members and senior management. 

We then worked closely with the NY and NJ facilities teams to capture & document the current IT and required peripherals impacted by the relocation, design various from-to plans with floorplans and elevations and determine what new gear would be needed and what devices could be decommissioned.  

Coordinating various trades at both locations was another area that required exact timings. Transportation logistics across two states with significant urban density provided additional challenges as seed equipment needed to go into the new location first to bring up the temporary network. Once the new facility was ready for migration activities, TDS scheduled 20 move wave weekends, handling up to 100 users per event. This allowed the team to judge effectiveness of the approach, tweak or change the move activities, and test the new environment before more significant relocation weekends were planned.  

The Results 

The office relocation proceeded smoothly throughout the move waves, with migrations scheduled around user groups. This allowed teams to remain together and not find them spread across two offices. After the final group was moved in, TDS conducted a post-relocation survey to assess how the experience went for those impacted. We were able to achieve an above 90% satisfaction rating from those who responded, with good feedback capture to help tweak and improve the IMAC process going forward.  

As a result of this project’s success, TDS was asked to help with additional branch office refreshes throughout North America. Another follow-on request was to assist them with a data center upgrade in Virginia and Texas. Today we remain a trusted resource for their teams to turn to as they know that we are responsive, knowledgeable and extremely familiar with their operations & business processes.