Aricent’s Managed TAC and Product Support Services Help a Leading OEM to Support 100+ Service Providers Worldwide

The client, a leading US based network equipment manufacturer, was looking to optimize its operational and maintenance costs and address time-to-market pressures by freeing-up internal resources for critical research and development functions.

Hence, it decided to support their existing product lines through a strategic partner that could address the following requirements, including:

  • Taking complete ownership of some of its legacy product lines;
  • Establishing a state-of-the-art 24×7 support infrastructure with best-in-class processes;
  • Establishing an extensive, cutting-edge lab with the ability to simulate different network scenarios;
  • Meeting stringent SLAs that had already been signed by the customer.

Aricent Solution

  Aricent established a world class support center for the company, providing complete Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 support for the Media Gateway, IP Switches, Routers, Wireless Access Points, and security product lines. These products have been installed at 100+ service providers and millions of enterprises around the world. The initial geographical scope of the engagement was the US and Canada, which was subsequently extended to provide support for Europe as well.

 The support center is driven by first-call resolution, best practices for determining root-cause of problems, network/service restore options and long-term analytics for improving the knowledge base. The center provides hotline support, remote diag­nostic support and operations; and management and engineering support for all product lines of the company.

Some of the key engagement activities included:

  • Problem isolation and lab simulations;
  • Solving interoperability issues;
  • Capturing and analyzing network traces;
  • Support and end-to-end management of Service Requests (SRs) of all severity levels till resolution;
  • Documenting, monitoring, and managing all SRs assigned to or accepted by the client using tools and procedures as stipulated by the NEM;
  • Routine management reporting on the volumes and nature of SRs as agreed;
  • Ongoing contact with end customers throughout the resolution process for SRs.

Results

Aricent exceeded the customer expectations on multiple counts, including:

  • Best-in-industry response time with 90% of cases picked up from the queue within 15 minutes;
  • Helping the client achieve an outstanding end-customer satisfaction score of 4.7 on a scale of 5 through shortened turnaround times and efficient resolution for reported issues;
  • Growth of the center to more than 450 FTEs over the last nine years of the engagement;
  • Transparent operational model with escalation management and reporting mechanism, allowing the client to focus on the strategic aspects of its business;
  • Optimal time-to-market by minimizing implementation risks;
  • Significant reduction in total cost of ownership and the associated risk with running the operations through Aricent’s customer value driven operational model.