Agosto was one of the first consulting firms in the metro area to understand the value of offering VoIP and MPLS as a managed service for our clients. In this blog post I will describe how we worked with one of our clients to implement this new strategy.
Client Overview
Our client is a multi-location organization with approximately 10-12 offices and a national footprint. Some global offices exist as well. The organization is in the manufacturing and distribution space and been in business for several years.
Business Challenge
This client’s business model required being collaborative across locations- they had a big need to share information as part of their manufacturing process and a need to handle high call volumes/multiple call centers as part of their distribution process. The fundamental challenge they were faced with really centered around the idea that their business was struggling to function as one seamless “unit”, and instead of being able to understand some technical and business advantages around having multiple locations, they suffered limitations. Each location had a separate phone system, different data and voice connections. This meant that numerous management and downtime issues were constantly popping up due to the complicated network topology, the disparate systems, and the multiple vendors involved. In addition, because most of the network and infrastructure for voice had been cobbled together from multiple resources, any advantages of what a more conceptual, enterprise-wide system might offer were unavailable. The cost of purchasing and managing such a solution internally was also a limiting factor.
When I first began to have a conversation with our client, they were getting ready to commit to another long-term leasing agreement with the same equipment they had in place. I understood that they were frustrated with their current situation, so I really pushed for those key personnel involved in managing both the voice and data network to isolate their frustrations- was it a lack of features and functionality that was the issue? Were their monthly expenses too high? Were they suffering from too much downtime? It finally boiled down to the day-to-day management and functionality of the current system. This client was experiencing major downtime and had no real path for resolution that didn’t involve being removed from their daily duties for periods of time that were longer than they could afford. Arguing with multiple vendors about who was to blame, trying to troubleshoot issues on their own across national locations, waiting for technicians, all of it added up to an inefficient approach.
The Agosto Solution
Agosto’s solution is actually quite simple. As a managed services provider, we have adopted the philosophy that delivering WAN functionality via managed MPLS and voice functionality via managed VoIP can rid customers of the problems this client faced, and increase the overall operating efficiency of the business. In addition we are able to provide technology that offers more features and functionality than most of the current offerings on the market today. Another very important aspect is that we can offer this package of services as a bundled approach from a single provider.
Typically, I explain to the senior executives as a high-level business argument that the approach offers the following business benefits:
We can clean up the billing and accounting/investment issues associated with product ownership and internal management, etc. We build a fixed monthly cost model for end-to-end services, voice and data connections, management of all handsets, and management of IT infrastructure.
We eliminate the inefficiencies associated with internal problem resolution and the required day-to-day management of multiple systems by internal staff by offering a fully-managed solution from one provider which includes 24×7 proactive support.
We offer a hosted platform of services, which allows our clients to remain nimble with their investment dollars and leverage the very best-in-class, enterprise level voice and data platform for their business without having to purchase the entire infrastructure end-to-end. In the SMB space, this is highly advantageous. We simply eliminate the majority of the work and technical limitations that can be associated with equipment ownership and purchasing that occurs in this space. Services offer a better fit for SMB.
