What is the core idea of technical support, outsourcing, IT platform, or system maintenance services in Softline? For us, a signed maintenance agreement is not only a document but also a convincing proof of mutually beneficial cooperation and partnership between the customer and the contractor. We strive to overfulfil the contract requirements to exceed customer expectations.
Delegate IT!
IT infrastructure—no matter is hardware- or software-based—never remains static. It is like a living being that always evolves and changes. For example, the company creates new requirements for application systems and infrastructure services, and, therefore, it should increase or change the hardware infrastructure. Therefore, the service has to be ongoing as well. The performance and interaction of related subsystems must be monitored, their status should be tracked, and if something breaks down, it must be urgently repaired.
All this requires resources. Something can be done on your own; sometimes, even significant problems are successfully solved by in-house employees. However, this distracts them and takes time that could have been spent on system development and customization. Keeping the infrastructure running is a routine job, and delegating it to the service provider’s engineers is a wise idea. They will use their expert knowledge and best practices to optimize the system and cover all business needs.
Undoubted expertise
The main advantages of Softline are our expertise and resource pool. Nowadays, many people talk about the price of services—yes, it can be a decisive criterion for business partner selection—but nevertheless, Russian customers give utmost importance to the outsourcer’s service quality and experience. When comparing various service offers, companies assess the qualification, expertise, and service portfolios of their potential contractors.
The important fact is that Softline’s strategy implies great attention to employees. The satisfaction of customer service experts is exceptionally important for us. These people are subject matter experts that continuously improve their skills, working in our company for 10 to 15 years. They are real professionals that know every inch of the customer systems they maintain. Moreover, the qualification of our specialists is so high that they sometimes conduct training courses for vendor employees in specialized areas! Therefore, we can safely say that we provide world-class service.
Unified service standard
The primary trend in IT infrastructure development is mobility and distributed architecture. Hardware vendors support it by introducing new cloud technologies, the BYOD approach, and much more. As a large global company that has established unified service quality standards not only in Russia and the CIS countries but also on a worldwide scale, Softline offers a centralized service and a single customer support policy. We can support the infrastructure of 100–200 branches of your organization throughout Russia and worldwide, guaranteeing a uniform SLA and controlling its observance.
Thanks to our enterprise-grade request processing and monitoring system, we can anticipate possible incidents and prevent emergencies before they occur.
We also have an efficient reporting system that allows us to generate meaningful real-time charts and track all customer interest trends.
Total quality control
Our quality management system is worthy of special mention. We use several tools to manage service quality.
Of course, the agreement stipulates the required service level, but that's not the end of the story. Before starting the system maintenance, we make a comprehensive audit, determine the infrastructure weaknesses and strengths, and recommend how to optimize it and increase its reliability. Total quality control is ensured by dedicated experts—service project managers that take care of the client during the agreement term and are ready to help round the clock. We hold monthly or quarterly meetings to discuss customer satisfaction and current service level, and we dynamically adapt it to new requirements.
I would like to reiterate that the core of service business lies not in the delivery, not in the decisions, but the customer experience. When two companies enter into an agreement, it means that they trust each other, and this partnership provides the ground for mutually beneficial cooperation. Customers get a system working without interruptions, and we get the opportunity to use our expertise and gain new experience.
Team
Our service team includes several expert groups. Some of them specialize in network solution support (both hardware and software). Others focus on server support, i.e., server software and hardware.
Our service project leads are specialists certified on the service delivery processes (ITIL, ITSM). The team also has high-qualified administrators who help manage the state of customer systems and perform the operational functions. As a result, our service unit is a multi-level conveyor that administrates systems and can solve many narrow and complex tasks at the same time. A server hardware expert always knows how the server OS works.
As quick and as good as possible
Most customer requests are about software operation, and only 10 to 15% is about hardware performance. Usually, they refer to hardware replacement. Our operation procedure is the following: we start by assuming that this is a system error. If it turns out that the problem is hardware-related, we either solve it ourselves or escalate it to vendors. The speed of hardware delivery to the client depends on the service level stipulated by the contract—from several days to a couple of hours. We analyze all our agreements to build our equipment replacement pool or arrange deals with vendor warehouse. As technical support specialists, we strive to provide maximum protection of business customers against downtime and technical issues!
