Vendor Management Improves Business Operations

Two years ago we stepped in as our client’s IT department and committed to providing end user support.  At the time, our client had 101 locations and around 360 employees all over the Midwest.  We mapped out the vendor responsibilities working directly with each vendor.  Using this map we implemented a triage system between our client, their vendors, and us.  We enabled our client’s employees, whether working in the store or in corporate, to simply contact when problems emerge.  For example, if our client had a problem with NetSuite, an ERP/CRM cloud application, he/she would call and send a ticket to us.  We would open a ticket with NetSuite support.  This triage system allows us to figure out exactly what the problem is within a short period of time and open the ticket with the right entity because we know all the interrelationships between the vendors and the infrastructure.  The main advantage of our Managed Services offering is more holistic view of what is happening with IT operations, thereby allowing problems solved in a timely manner.  Another benefit is that by having us work with IT departments of our client’s vendors, problems can be solved quicker allowing the IT team to focus on revenue generating strategic initiatives.

One example of how our services improve our client’s business is by managing their Point of Sale (POS) system.  Considering that this particular client is a retailer, it is of essential to be able to process sales transactions timely and accurately.  At the time we started working with our client, their POS system was around ten years old, and had outdated architecture.  We realized that the databases on each location were growing too large and failing.  Typically what would have happened in the past is that their IT staff would just keep fixing the problems in a reactive way, a short-term solution that does not address the root cause of the problems.  During times when transaction would fail, credit card transactions had to be written on a piece of paper and processed manually.  Once the transaction system recovered, the stores would call in to process the transaction, sometimes much later after the transaction had actually occurred.  This problem was compounded by the fact that 75 percent of the stores were having frequent outages.  Their POS was off once, twice, and sometimes even three times a month for up to a day, and sometimes even more than once a day.  When our team stepped in, we continued to perform the same patches and fixes, but we also started looking into a more long-term solution because these failures were not acceptable for the success of our clients business.  We sat down and looked at some low cost simple solutions that we could implement to help solve these problems. Within three weeks, we had solved nearly all of the transaction problems by revamping their data warehousing process.  There is still an occasional issue here and there which is to be expected in a complex environment, but outages decreased from 75 percent of stores once to three times a month to maybe one to two stores a quarter. It has drastically improved their operations and their ability to conduct business.

A Managed Server: Saving Time and Money

Among many services provided as part of the Managed Server offering, we provide database management service.  Recently, one of our clients made a change to a big shared database to find out that product prices shown after this change were from two years ago.  All of the sudden, products were sold at old prices at multiple store locations.  The database was pulling thousands of wrong pricing fields.  In the meantime, our client could not sell anything because of inaccurate data causing their pricing and inventory levels to be off.

 

Our team stepped in and solved this problem within couple of minutes.  All we needed to know was when the change that off set the database occurred. Considering that we conduct hourly backups, we were able to restore the database to previous state and restart the server in order to reverse the corruption.  All of their data was restored to the correct state and their stores were able to continue with their operations. Had this not been the case, they would have to fix prices manually which would have taken a long period of time.  Ultimately, the corruption would have caused a long business interruption causing a loss revenue and unhappy customers.

Managed Services: Helping Our Clients Do What They Do Best

Our Managed Services provide powerful, flexible technology that supports our client's business specific IT needs and budgets.  For one of our clients, our team acts as an outsourced IT department, managing their technology without choking their budget.

Our client has a high transaction volume business, and having the transaction system down will cause significant business interruption.  Before we stepped in, our client's employees who are located throughout the United States, would reach out to their own IT support contact.  This contact was pretty much anybody who could fix the problem.  This method of support was wasting valuable employee time. When we stepped in, we set up a triage system between our client's employees, their vendors, and our team.  When a problem emerges, our client's employees can call in our support team who opens a ticket, and directs it to the appropriate vendor to make sure the problem gets resolved quickly.  In this way, our client is able to continue to run their operations without business disruption.  For example, a store might have a generalized credit card transaction problem.  There are a lot of dependencies with the transaction system for it to work properly.  The problem might be that the Point of Sale (POS) application is not working properly, the computer itself, the software on the computer, a hardware issue, the Firewall, or the Internet connection itself.  Someone who manages the store would not actually be able to identify the problem without investing a lot of time.  When an issue occurs, what they know is that system is down and as a result, they are unable to continue their operation.  By calling into call center to do vendor triage, we take the burden off of the store manager so he or she is able to focus on operations rather than trying to diagnose and resolve these system problems.  

Some of the challenges we faced in implementing this system was that it was hard to change old habits.  Some employees continued to use the usual go to IT help person near them to help fix the issue.  Over time they realized that this method usually ended up taking longer.  We addressed this issue speaking at our client’s annual conference where we introduced ourselves, how we work with their vendors, and went through general user training.  At the beginning, our client's employees were skeptical, most of them had previous unpleasant, unresponsive, and frustrating IT experiences.  We stood apart from their previous IT relationships, by stressing training and education.  We also ensured that users know how to leverage our other services to become as efficient as possible.  We know that first impressions are important, and we are focused on responsiveness of our service  during the ramp up phase which can sometime be challenging with new systems and procedures.  This is just another case of us becoming an extension of the team, something we really enjoy.