A successful partner today has to move beyond a reactive, break-fix model of IT, and the three winners in the Best Service Organization category provide examples for the rest of the channel on how to build a compelling, and profitable, services organization.
While they’ve been in business for 10 years, Brampton, Ont.-based IT Weapons recognized the services trend six years ago and had been building-up its services business ever since. In the last two years services has really become the core of the business said Mike Dabner, director of managed services for IT Weapons.
“We really started building a service desk almost six years ago and we’ve made some significant changes to the organization in the last two years,” said Dabner. “The team has really expanded, primarily because of the growth on the managed services side of the business.”
A key services differentiator for IT Weapons, said Dabner, is the way it organizes its services teams. It starts with what it calls its tier one team which staffs a service desk, handling all incoming requests from IT Weapons customers and operated a 24 by 7 network operations centre. Above that team are two technical escalation layers, which work with the tier one team to ensure problem tickets are routed and escalated effectively.
“The team leads act as traffic cops, managing workflow and ensuring the tier one guys see the ticket and move it up if necessary,” said Dabner,
What’s unique about the IT Weapons model is that it’s all done in-house. While most organizations escalate tier two or three to outside engineers, IT Weapons has its upper-level support within the organization.
“We escalate to the senior guys who actually built the infrastructure, so they’re intimately aware of the systems and understand the requirements,” said Dabner.
Jeremy MacBean, research coordinator with IT Weapons, said the partner’s commitment to service level excellence is probably epitomized by its work with Ornge, which runs Ontario’s air ambulance service. The consulting team at IT Weapons was responsible for redesigning their infrastructure, and now they also host and manage it as well.
“For criticality of uptime, there’s nothing more severe. If their communications fail, human lives are at risk,” said MacBean. “As a flagship customer that really showcases excellence, and acts as a motivator. It’s a badge on honour for people here to say if we can handle this kind if infrastructure, we can handle anything a customer throws at us.”
The Channel Elite Silver Award for Best Service Organization went to Markham, Ont.-based Insite Computer Group.
The Bronze award went to Achievo Netstar Solutions Co. of Toronto.