Having Saved $1million+ on Global Cisco Support with avsnet, GPS Industry Leader Renews for Another Three Years

Graham Fry, Managing Director, avsnet

For the last three years, avsnet has been hard at work consolidating this customer’s network estate, saving the GPS manufacturer more than a million dollars and delivering impressive efficiencies in network management.

With such substantial cost savings and impressive business results, the company in question has renewed its contract with avsnet for another three years.

Many of the original unique challenges associated with the company’s network support processes have been solved and as a result, avsnet has delivered the expected positive outcomes for the business as a whole. These include:

• Approximately £270,000 a year ($400,000) in contract cost savings, and greater overall financial flexibility
• A more efficient IT department focused on strategic projects, not maintenance tasks
• Improved network visibility and complete service coverage
• Simplified contract management and clearer budgetary processes
• Increased availability due to proactive network maintenance and avsnet’s managed services
• A single global point of contact that simplifies how support services are delivered and maintained

A spokesperson from the company’s senior management team said, “With such a complex estate, the sheer scale of maintaining, tracking and supporting such a range of equipment was difficult. This encompassed managing a central repository of information including end-of-life dates, asset location, business usage, software and hardware release dates, current financial value, maintenance records and warranties. This is no longer the case with avsnet.”

Choosing avsnet

avsnet’s close partnership with Cisco meant they were able to design a support service that included the necessary supplier consolidation and provided an extremely competitive contract financially, one that was vastly more cost effective than their competitors.

The company’s spokesperson continued, “Controlling operating expenditure was a factor in our decision, but it was equally important to ensure we received full network service coverage. We wanted a highly responsive global support partner with a single point of contact that would give us better visibility of our network and devices, and proactively address any potential issues to prevent network disruption.”

An estate with more than 1,000 devices, including Cisco switches, routers and handsets, is managed by avsnet across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. avsnet’s support process includes:

• Network assessment – an initial network discovery provided actionable intelligence on IT assets approaching retirement and ascertained where service coverage was needed the most.
• Cost effective support – an experienced support team acts as a highly responsive partner for all worldwide support queries.
• Managed services expertise – regular preventative maintenance combines with remote monitoring, ensuring issues are rapidly resolved with minimal disruption to business operations.
• Dedicated technical management – avsnet’s direct access to Cisco resources and technical staff minimises network issues and ensures the company’s assets are kept up-to-date and optimised 24x7x365.

The company’s spokesperson concluded, “We have seen network issues decline, an increase in response times and direct financial benefits. Our team spends less time managing upgrades and support queries and is now focused on projects that grow the business. The single service level agreement is particularly valuable.”