As another installment in a series of Q-and-As with Tim Pavlovich, a Services Consultant with Dell OEM Solutions,we will discuss some creative ways to help you solve the complex challenge of creating a global supply chain and support infrastructure to service your customers more efficiently.
What types of global supply chain and support challenges are our customers facing?
Pavlovich: One thing I hear a lot from customers is that they need more ways to play to their strengths and focus on their core valueto their customers—often their intellectual property and innovation. In many cases, they are realizing that running a global supply chain and support infrastructure isn’t really their core competency.
Recently, we had a global OEM customer come to us for help in designing a global fulfillment and support model that can be supported with minimal resources but one that provides rapid, frictionless scalability to service their network caching appliance customers as they expand into many remote regions around the world. They wanted the ability to shift more responsibility to Dell to manage local fulfillment and installation globally via a “help desk to help desk” model.
Is that a standard service that we provide our OEM customers?
Pavlovich: No, in that case, it really defines the word ‘custom’ but it proves that we can architect a solution based on our OEM customers’ unique requirements. In this case, we provided a single portal to place orders in local currency to minimize multiple transactions and point of contacts within each country. Secondly, our OEM operations program manager coordinates service tag entitlement within the region as well as support integration with the service delivery manager.
Lastly, an EDI (Delta Connect) portal accepts support requests for onsite and advance exchange services directly from our OEM customer’s help desk application. The Dell help desk manages the request and the dispatch for both direct and indirect countries.
This customer challenged us to build the solution to fit not only their upcoming and future appliance assets, but to include all of their assets previously purchased over our multi-year relationship. While the customer recognizes that creating such a customized solution moves them up the S-curve on the axis of cost to achieve greater customization, the return will be in better customer experience, efficiencies and long-term operational cost savings.
So by working in partnership with us to design a solution for their needs, what were some of the immediate benefits to our customer and theirs?
Because this was a comprehensive solution designed to include follow-the-sun support access, a Service Delivery Manager for escalations, global service history reporting, and indirect country support including a 5-day service level agreement for parts or full-unit replacement, the customer benefited from a consolidated, simplified support model. For them, having a local procurement model, an automated support request system for faster deployment and a single point of contact to oversee the global support model including existing installed base were absolutely key for them to support their customers and geographic expansion effectively.
To learn more about how we can help you design a global supply chain and support solution for you in service of your customers, contact your Dell OEM Solutions account team.