The Impact of Your MSP’s Level of Support to Your Global Business

Executive Summary

In Virtela's recent survey, 2011 Top IT Infrastructure Priorities and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) Improvements, over 400 IT professionals at multinational companies (MNCs) weighed in on existing satisfaction level with MSPs, as well as areas they feel MSPs could improve upon.

It's not surprising that the top areas of improvement for MSPs are focused more around value, support and understanding of needs rather than the technical capability, network metric or service function. Companies want improvements in value for the price, timely communication of status and issues, and better understanding of requirements.

In this eBook we will take a closer look at the survey results around MSP satisfaction and improvement areas, and explore the impact customer support can have on your business.

Introduction

Virtela has built a successful business by providing global managed network, security and cloud services to midmarket and Fortune 500 multinational companies around that world. To provide personalized services and support globally, it is a must for Virtela to stay on top of the changing IT environment and deeply understand the business of MNCs on an ongoing basis.

Although we talk with many IT leaders at MNCs daily, conducting periodic surveys allows us to validate and gain new insights on what's most important to these companies.

A Closer Look at the 2011 Survey Results with Forrester Research

Virtela conducted a webinar with Forrester Research addressing the full survey results, which includes trends driving the top priorities as well as MSP satisfaction and improvement areas. Click here to access the on-demand webinar.

Survey Results

Conducted in late 2010 and early 2011, Virtela's survey of MNCs revealed the following pain points around MSPs:

• MNCs are satisfied with MSPs. Companies are generally satisfied with MSPs. In our survey, 19% of respondents gave MSPs an "excellent" rating with 71% awarding "good" marks. This shows continued and growing confidence in service providers.
• MSPs need to understand the unique needs of MNCs and tailor solutions. The survey results reinforce that the needs and challenges of MNCs are unique and often more complex with operations spanning multiple countries. As a result, these companies want service providers to have a better understanding of their needs and deliver more flexible and personalized services.
• MNCs want more timely and responsive support. Given the MNCs' reliance on MSPs to design, implement, manage and provide on-site support for their global IT infrastructure, they want more timely communications of status, proactive notification of problems and improved response time.
• More value for the price. These companies have the unique challenge of making remote users around the world just as productive as those employees at the main offices or headquarters. They need to provide a variety of services while controlling costs.

Respondent Profile

Role
More than 400 IT professionals at leading multinational companies responded to the survey, of which 75 percent are key decision makers and influencers.

Industry
Figure 1 represents the distribution of respondents by vertical with Manufacturing, Services and Financial Services as the top three verticals represented. The Services category includes professional services companies, consulting firms, as well as legal, health, engineering, accounting, education, social and business services companies.

Figure 1. Vertical Industry Distribution of Survey Respondents

Overall Satisfaction with MSP's

With 9 out of 10 IT decision makers and influencers giving MSPs a "good" or "excellent" rating, see Figure 2, this bodes well for MSPs.

However, MSPs should not get too comfortable because MNCs cited several areas for improvement in the following categories:

• Service and solutions offering
• Installation, implementation and service delivery
• Service management and monitoring
• Pricing and billing

Figure 2. Overall MNC Satisfaction with MSPs

Service and Solutions Offering

Service and Solutions Offering Continued

When asked "What can your network service provider do to improve its service and solution offering?" the number one response was for MSPs to demonstrate a better understanding of the MNCs requirements, followed by more flexible and personalized services and better technical and design expertise.

Not surprising, really. In order to provide the optimal solution, the MSP needs to take the time to fully understand the customer's requirements.

This is critical because what works in a local, regional or national implementation in the U.S. doesn't necessarily work globally. MNCs face unique challenges with latency issues due to greater distances, time zone differences, country-specific regulations, lack of on-site resources in remote areas, and limited technology, access, and local provider options in certain regions of the world. The ability of the MSP to fully understand the solution requirements would allow them to provide the customer with a more flexible, personalized service. Through that process, the MSP demonstrates it's technical and design expertise.

With so many service providers providing cookie-cutter solutions, it is no wonder that MNCs strive for a more personalized service offering. Virtela's approach is different from many MSPs because of its partnerships with carriers and vendors around the world. That means we are able to provide tailor-made solutions for each customer, depending on their requirements.

Installation, Implementation and Service Delivery

Installation, Implementation and Service Delivery Continued

It can be painful to implement a new service, and the ongoing support can have a significant impact on the success of the solution and, by extension, the business. Like any relationship - whether personal or professional - communication is crucial. The relationship with MSPs is no different. More than 50 percent of the survey respondents indicated that the timely communication of status and issues is one area in which they would like to see improvement.

In many cases, MNCs are wholly reliant on the MSP to manage their remote infrastructure. The MSP becomes the company's eyes and ears, as well as hands and feet, on-site for their global implementation. Without timely communication and fast response, this can be unsettling and alarming for MNCs.

At Virtela, we are proud of the success our customers have achieved as a result of our focus on timely communication and fast response. Virtela's global network operations centers maintain an impressive 99 percent rate for opening trouble tickets proactively, significantly outperforms the company's aggressive 4-hour mean time to restore (MTTR) guarantee with a 1.74 hour average, and boasts a 12-second average speed-to-answer time. As a result, our customers experience the minimum impact on business.

"Virtela's customer service has far exceeded our expectations. Even though it wasn't their responsibility, Virtela stepped in so our users weren't left stranded. Moreover, the Virtela team consistently communicates with us. With most providers, you don't hear from them after the network is brought up."

Service Management and Monitoring

Service Management and Monitoring Continued

The number one response to "What can your network service provider do to improve the service management and monitoring process?" was the proactive notification of problems, closely followed by an improvement in response time.

When was the last time a service provider notified you when a problem occurred? For many of our survey respondents, that was the number one pain point.

In today's workplace, it is not uncommon for employees to have more on their plate. Which is why having a service provider that alerts you when a problem occurs - or going one step further and proactively opening a trouble ticket for that issue - can make a significant difference in productivity.

Virtela's predictive analytics technology, VirtelaPredict™, diagnoses over 95 percent of potential network and security issues before they can impact network health. What this means for the customer is that major issues affecting availability are prevented before they occur, recurring bottlenecks are proactively investigated and remediated before they cause an outage, and problems are resolved more quickly.

Pricing and Billing

Pricing and Billing Continued

Who doesn't want more value for the price? When asked "What can your network service provider do to improve pricing and billing?" that was by far the top response among the companies surveyed. Companies are closely monitoring their budgets and strive to get the most value out of the dollars spent.

Each company has their own set of priorities and their own idea of what is valuable to the business. One obvious way to provide more value for the price is to look at the top concerns for MNCs as a whole.

By understanding the MNCs requirements, the MSP will be able to identify the areas that are most meaningful to the customer. Whether that refers to the service offering, a dedicated account team that offers proactive monitoring and management or timely communication, a deep understanding of the requirements allows the MSP to build personalized, flexible solutions that will deliver the most value for the price. For many MNCs, getting exceptional support from their MSPs is a big part of getting the most value.

The impact of Service Delivery and Support on Your Business

Often, the time spent dealing with service issues can significantly impact productivity. Not only does it require a time investment by the person or team managing the issue, but in many cases it can affect the company's ability to do business if the issue results in network or service down-time.

The Pitfalls of Poor Customer Support

If the turnaround time to get a problem solved - or even speak to a support engineer - is too long, the impact on business and revenue can be painful. For example, consider a manufacturing company that processes thousands of dollars per day in orders. When the IT infrastructure goes down, the service provider's time to repair could have a huge impact on the manufacturer's ability to process those orders in a timely manner. The result: lost revenue.

Having a service provider that you trust can make all the difference. You know someone will answer your call. You know you'll be up and running in the quickest way possible. And you know at the end of the day, the issue was resolved with the minimum impact to business. Better yet, wouldn't it be great to have a trusted MSP that is constantly pre-empting problems from happening?

The Impact of Service Delivery and Support on Your Business Continued

At the end of the day, MNCs rely on their MSPs.

There are many situations that show a direct correlation between the success of an MNC's business and the level of support that the MSP provides. Serving MNCs is a specialized business that requires an MSP with deep experience and a business model designed to manage a complex, multi-vendor and multi-cultural environment around the clock effectively. This MSP must at the core of its business be committed to understanding the MNC's business, provide exceptional support and innately go the extra mile.

"We're very impressed with Virtela's full service end-to-end, strong technical skill set and fast responsiveness. Virtela executed on or ahead of time to ensure our move to the new network was seamless and resulted in zero downtime."

Virtela’s Commitment to Exceptional Customer Support

At Virtela, we are proud of the success our customers have achieved as a result of our timely communications and fast response.

"At Virtela, everyone gets in a room and just does what needs to be done. There is no finger pointing or lines of demarcation when it comes to solving a problem. Virtela's obsession with customer involvement and satisfaction was one of the prime factors in selecting them as our solutions provider."

"Virtela is truly an extension of my IT staff, providing advanced skills and technologies to proactively manage our global multivendor IT infrastructure. Virtela often fixes issues before our IT staff or end users are even aware of them, giving them consistently better performance and enabling us to shift our IT focus from operational infrastructure reaction to proactive and advance planning execution."

Virtela's Commitment to Exceptional Customer Support Continued

Virtela is committed to provide exceptional customer support with employees that inherently go the extra mile for their customers:

• 99% of trouble tickets opened proactively
• 95% of issues identified before they impact network health
• 95% of problems resolved at first call

As a result, Virtela has been recognized by many of its customers and by the industry with numerous awards for support, services and technology.

"The personalized support I receive from Virtela distinguishes them. When I speak with Virtela about solutions, I know they are helping me choose the right solution, not just the most expensive solution. That was not the case with other providers."

"As we expanded in the Middle East, we saw significant increases in both network costs and implementation times from our existing network providers, Virtela offered us a managed network service that was an order of magnitude less expensive, and the company truly advocates on our behalf with local carriers, resulting in strong ongoing service management and performance."

A Closer Look at Virtela Customer Support

Virtela's employees are committed to providing exceptional customer support. Each customer can rely on a dedicated account team and can count on Virtela to be the single point of contact for expert IT infrastructure design, implementation, and 24x7 proactive monitoring and management globally.

Take a closer look at Virtela's customer support team:

Voice of the Customer

At Virtela, the voice of the customer is very important to us. It's not enough that we go above and beyond for our customers; they must experience the difference and the value.

Listen to one of Virtela's customers - Eric Weatherby, Principal Network Engineer for QAD. QAD provides innovative enterprise software and services for manufacturers around the globe. QAD solved their application response time and remote access issues for their highly collaborative workforce around the world using Virtela's managed cloud-based services.

Conclusion

Given the unique needs and challenges of MNCs, the requirements for global managed services are different and often more stringent than domestic-only services. It requires MSPs to have the technical knowledge, as well as expertise in global partnerships and a proven track record of successfully serving multinational companies.

As revealed in our survey, MNLs are generally satisfied with MSPs service and support, however, they would like to see improvements in the value for price, timely communication of status and issues, and better understanding of requirements.

Having a service provider that you trust can make all the difference. The time spent dealing with service issues can significantly impact productivity, and if the turnaround time to get a problem solved - or even speak to a support engineer - is too long, the impact on business and revenue can be painful.

With Virtela's commitment to providing exceptional customer support, listening and getting feedback from our customers is entrenched in our daily business. We only know one way to provide global managed services - we go the extra mile for our customers.

About Virtela

Virtela is the world's largest independent managed network, security, and cloud services company providing award-winning services -- including managed networks, security, IT infrastructure management, mobile device management and application acceleration -- to midmarket and Fortune 500 customers globally.

Virtela is the single point of contact for expert IT infrastructure design, implementation, and 24x7 proactive monitoring and management worldwide. Our unique model integrates best-of-breed technologies and the best local, regional and global networks through our partnerships with 500+ carriers to offer unparalleled geographic reach in more than 190 countries. And because we have a business model that's carrier, vendor and technology agnostic, we are able to personalize customer solutions, integrating the optimal carrier and vendor partners to meet MNCs specific requirements.