Case Study: Educating Customers Helps Them Make More Informed Decisions

The Challenge

Whether a large, multinational corporation, a school district, a non-profit institution or a government agency, there’s one thing all entities have in common—their IT network is the foundation on which every employee, process and procedure relies. When that reliance is supported by technology, which evolves at a staggering pace, IT departments can’t afford to waste money. Every dime spent needs to accommodate new technologies, cutting-edge solutions and digital transformation. Waste, in either soft or hard costs, can stand in the way of projects and initiatives that could be shaping the organization for years to come.

The City of Coral Springs in Florida could relate. Without enough IT personnel on staff to manage dozens of existing Cisco contracts, they knew they were overspending on their Cisco SMARTnet maintenance agreements. When you’ve deployed thousands of Cisco hardware and software assets, each purchased at different times, monitoring expiration dates and managing each contract is a complex, time-consuming task.

Initially, the City of Coral Springs had turned to several Netsync competitors to help them inventory their Cisco assets and manage the associated SMARTnet contracts. Those engagements resulted in little more than added frustration to the city’s IT department. None had the experience and expertise to deliver what The City of Coral Springs needed. Then they met with Netsync.

It’s About More Than Getting a Letter of Authorization From the Customer

SMARTnet, which is an acronym for Service, Maintenance, Advanced Replacement, TAC and Network, provides award-winning support from Cisco’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) and includes hardware replacement, onsite support options and online tools. Cisco SMARTnet mitigates expensive, time-consuming risks associated with network downtime. However, if Cisco network assets have already reached End-of-Life or have been removed from the network, it’s not uncommon for clients to continue paying to protect assets that have already been decommissioned. It’s a like paying auto insurance for a rusted-out car that’s been sitting in a field for the past 30 years.

Again, monitoring and maintaining dozens of different contracts and expiration dates is a difficult task. That’s why so many government agencies, educational institutions and enterprises have turned to Netsync. They simply do it different, and better.

“The difference between our SMARTnet practice and others are our people,” said Brooke Sabo, Solutions Architect, Service Contracts. “Our team has worked together for the past 13 years to help literally thousands of organizations with their Cisco SMARTnet contracts. Our team sees what others don’t. There’s a lot more to it than simply getting a Letter of Authorization from the customer and pulling contracts. We understand the details and nuances related to SMARTnet contracts, so we save the customer unnecessary costs.”

Netsync’s SMARTnet professionals were able to do far more than simply pull Cisco contracts and respective expiration dates for the City of Coral Springs. As they do with all SMARTnet customers, they got far more granular, analyzing, for instance, product IDs and software versions that may have changed. Without this level of close inspection, multiple SMARTnet agreements can be unnecessarily, and costly, covering a single asset.

One Expiration Date, One Great Netsync Solution

Netsync was able to consolidate all of their Cisco contracts with a coterminous expiration date on all equipment ensuring they were only covering what was needed. This accommodated the City of Coral Springs’s diverse budgetary objectives.

“Netsync was able to do what their competitors weren’t—accurately inventory our Cisco assets and enable us to gain insight into them,” said K C Suresh, a Network Analyst in the Department of Information Technology for the City of Coral Springs. “They simplified our SMARTnet agreements, so we had a clear line of sight of all our IT assets.”

Netsync’s SMARTnet practice achieved for the City of Coral Springs what they’ve been able to achieve for thousands of other jurisdictions ― saved time and money while enabling them to budget more easily.

A lot of companies claim to manage and monitor their clients’ SMARTnet contracts. Netsync, however, provides added value with informed client education enabling them to make informed decisions.