T
ouchbase has been providing managed services to companies all over the world for over 20
years. To deliver an exceptional experience to every client we employ some of the highest
certified engineers across the globe, and operate to well established industry best practices. We
hope this experience and the content of this document will help you better understand what to
What are the Advantages
of Managed Service for
your Organization?
A
s a rule of thumb, you always want to hire a service provider that you trust,
that you know is looking out for the greater good of your organization, and a
provider that is going to be on hand when you most need them.
Are you managing all of your own
communications & network technology?
Do you find that your Technology Team
is focusing more on maintenance than
strategic initiatives and improving the
user experience?
Managed Service Providers are there to help
you reduce your operating costs and allow your
Technology Team to focus on higher value
activity. Your Technology Team can focus on
the user experience and the application of
the technology, while your managed service
provider ensures that the critical day to day
tasks around maximizing uptime and keeping
systems current are not forgotten.
A Managed Service Provider is Technology Partner that delivers a defined set of services around a specific set of technologies to an organization. The services range from managing faults as they occur (break fix) to taking over the management of all of the day-to-day responsibilities (full service). In addition it is common for the Managed Service Provider to be fully accountable for keeping the systems up to date, providing on site resource and managing all patches to your systems. They are accountable for the performance of specific technologies, while the organization maintains full control over the whole environment and its development. Cost savings can be significant in employing a Managed Service Partner but on top of that the breadth of skills and depth of capability that an organization gains access to is greater than anything most companies could employ internally.
If you are a global company and are trying to provide support internally, you would need to
employ all levels of engineer and enough of them to cover each of the time zones that your company works within.
A Managed Services Provider should be capable of delivering a Follow the Sun service with all levels of engineer available at any time to meet the needs of your environment. This is a far more cost effective way of delivering the same or a better outcome for the business.
In addition, and if you select the right MSP, you should expect them to hold regular knowledge transfer sessions with your Technology Team to ensure that their skills and capability get shared within your organization over time.
Finally the single point of contact across multiple technologies and providers that an MSP can represent is extremely valuable. The common problem of finger pointing is eradicated by having one company, knowledgeable across all technologies, that can manage every situation to resolution by driving clear accountability and ownership.
In summary the correct choice of MSP can bring time to you and your people, reduce your cost, provide you with a far
more skilled talent pool, and be your one point of contact for any issue or initiative around the technology area they are
responsible for. A very compelling proposition.
When selecting your MSP, these simple Best Practices will ensure you find the
right company and drive maximum value from them:
1
Assigned Client Relationship
Manager
Insist on having a Client Relationship Manager within the MSP that
understands your business, the requirements you have of the MSP, the commitments the MSP has made to you, and the ability to manage any issue to the highest level in the MSP to get it resolved. They should be an extension of your own team and work to make your experience exceptional every day.
2
ITIL- based Methodology
This is an industry standard that ensures MSP’s work not just on the resolution of problems and finding their root cause, but that they operate to a tight process which holds every party accountable in ensuring your issues are dealt with quickly and effectively.
3
SPOC: Single Point of Contact
Perhaps the most important part of making your MSP successful to you is their ability to act as the single point of contact for multiple technologies. Managing issues is very time consuming if you do not understand all of the components of technology and driving accountability and resolution is impossible. Your MSP should do this for you so you and your team can focus on more value adding activity.
4
Speed of Resolution
The basic function in Managed Services is keeping your system uptime at a maximum. This takes an exceptional team that has the ability to work across multiple technologies (data network, call processing, video processing, messaging, presence,
conferencing, integrations, contact center, web) to identify the root cause of problems quickly and resolve them. Depth and capacity in the team is crucial for you to be sure you will have the resource you require to resolve any issue you experience at any time.
5
Proactive Monitoring
The best fault resolution is the one that was fixed before anyone knew it existed. To achieve this, your partner must have the capability to monitor your systems on a real time basis and react to issues before they arise or at least as soon as they do.
6
365 x 24 x 7
A fault can arise at any time, and when it does you want to be in contact with a live and capable support engineer. Your MSP must be able to deliver this at all times of the day or night on a “Follow the Sun” basis. You don’t know when the issue will occur but you need to know that when it does you have a task force ready to act and capable of delivering.
7
Trending & Performance
Analysis
Your MSP should be collecting information in order to spot patterns or trends in the way your systems are operating. Done correctly this can help
8
Optimization Capability Planning
The communications technology you invest in today is always evolving. At least once a year major releases of new software bring new capability and functions. Your MSP should be fully responsible for keeping you and your team on top of all updates and new
Touchbase specializes in Communications & Networking Technology Support.
This covers all aspects of Unified Communications (voice, video, IM, presence & conferencing), Contact Center, LAN, WAN, Wireless & Security within our clients environments. Organization of all sizes across the world choose to work with Touchbase as their MSP due to our breadth of capability, specialist focus and depth of technical talent. Difficult to measure until it is experience is our absolute obsession with client satisfaction and delivering on our commitments to every one of them. It is these things that have led us to become the company we are today with 90% plus client satisfaction and 100% reference-ability.
With our strong Culture, exceptional People, No “ticket taker” methodology, and Regular Optimize Briefings we go above and beyond what is expected from a managed service provider.
OPTIMIZE Support
Follow the Sun contact and a single client management system across Touchbase Service Hubs in Sydney, London and Denver, delivers professional and immediate support to the client – wherever they are and whatever the time.
• Incident Management • Problem Management • On-Site Resolution • Change Management
• Advance Replacement Parts • Technical System Advice • Vendor Escalation
Management
OPTIMIZE Manage+
Service elements, any of which can be added to OPTIMIZE Support:
Managed Services
+ Performance Management - Identify and avoid potential problems instead of spending valuable time rectifying them. Focused on Foundation (Routing & Switching), Unified Communications (IP Telephony & Messaging) and Customer Contact (CIM & IVR) technologies, there are two service levels available:
+ Configuration Management - A detailed and logical model of the supported systems and an overall network schematic + Client Based Resource - Skilled resource to be based at a
client location, on a needs and requirement basis
+ Service Continuity Management - Any interruption to regular operation recognized and with a risk assessment detailing the effect
+ Managed WAN - Global WAN capabilities (MPLS & VPLS) enables a true end to end service management proposition
Assurance
(as standard)• 24 x 7 Performance Monitoring • Alerting to Thresholds • Real-time & Historical
Diagnostics and Troubleshooting • Real-time Call Quality
Measurement
Intelligence
(optional)• All Assurance services • Real-Time Web Reports • Historical & Trend Reporting • System Analysis and
Recommendations CLIENT ENGAGEMENT MODEL
24 x 7 x 365 Service Desk
• Ongoing work to resolution through seamless handover between regions
• ITIL Best Practices adhered to worldwide
• Direct access to Certified Touchbase Engineer any time • Seamless information via a consistent service desk system
Thinking about Moving to a Virtual
Environment?
Tips and Tricks for your IT Team
Want users to work from home? Well, first, you must be able to support them properly.
At Touchbase and within all of our clients, we work with a mix of remote and office workers. We find that with proper planning and the correct investment in technology, our people and our clients can work seamlessly from anywhere and at anytime. To help you get moving towards virtual working we have a few basic tips
Jabber for Collaboration
We use Jabber from Cisco for all Video, Voice, IM and Presence. Cisco Jabber helps you
communicate and work with colleagues, partners, and customers more quickly and securely through best-in-class Cisco Unified Communications. Built on open standards for interoperability and integrated with commonly used desktop business applications, Cisco Jabber for Windows, MAC, Android or IOS can help you operate productively wherever you are.
Features include the ability to engage not only in one-to-one chat but also in a group session, and to transfer files. The Jabber software also keeps logs of users’ IM activity, and can be integrated with Microsoft Office or Google, offering presence and IM features within their business applications.
Data Center
Make sure to set up in a secure, temperature controlled data center.
Having all of your production equipment in datacenters allows you to be independent from a specific facility and gives you natural redundancy and disaster recovery. You can pick up and move to any location, or work from home or on the go. You can host all of your company’s productivity tools, applications and equipment and deliver them to the end user anywhere in the world.
Strong VPN
You need to be sure you have adequate bandwidth for voice, video and data so you do not run into any issues down the road or if you need to scale..
Good headset for your users
You want either a blue tooth or USB headset. One that can help with noise cancellation if you are working in a busy coffee shop or any background noise. This will also benefit your organizations cellular use as well. You can use the headset to plug right into Jabber and use your computer as a soft phone - avoiding all cellular minutes or international roaming fees. Also with the headset, you can hook up a single number reach.
Video Endpoints
Make sure your users have a good camera. This will help optimize efficiency and improve company culture while people are in a remote environment.
Internal meetings
This is less from a technical stand point, but to maintain a certain company culture we have seen it is best to meet regularly. It boosts moral, helps people get to know each other and work better together, it can bring collaboration to a whole new level. With the correct applications (Jabber & Webex) along with the correct connectivity and device any user can join any meeting with full voice
