Technical Assistance Centre
The FlexITy Technical Assistance Centre (TAC) provides expert vendor management behind the solutions which we build. Our Customer Support Engineers provide a single point of accountability to resolve all customer infrastructure issues.
FlexITy has implemented a sophisticated quality management system to guarantee efficient, effective problem determination and resolution, including automated escalations to senior engineers and dedicated teams of engineers for our strategic customers. TAC managers are available to handle escalation 24 hours a day 7 days a week to ensure that appropriate resources are committed to solve customer problems.
The TAC works closely with customers and vendors to replicate and isolate problems in our state of the art Interoperability Lab. In critical high priority emergencies our TAC engineers work around the clock with the customer and our vendor partners to resolve outages.
TAC engineers also work proactively to inform customers of software defects and security vulnerabilities reported in the industry. Our engineering teams scrutinize field notices for critical information on potential catastrophic failures that affect our customers, and can provide software release testing.
TAC Support provides:
- Validation, research and root cause analysis of problems identified by customers.
- A knowledge base of known errors to aid proactive problem identification and resolution.
- Vendor collaboration to identify bug fixes and workarounds for critical problems that impact our customers.
- Automated parts dispatch, with four hour replacement from our Field Sparing Locations across North America.
- Dedicated technicians certified in our strategic partners’ products.
- Conference bridge facilities during outages.
24x7x365 Service Desk
The Service Desk plays an important part in the provision of services. It is the first contact the business users have in their use of services when something does not work as expected. The Service Desk is a single point of contact for end users who need help. Without this, an organization could certainly face losses due to inefficiencies.
The main focuses of FlexITy’s Service Desk are:
- Manned live 24x7x365 including holidays for all TAC, NOC and remote engineering services.
- Act as a Single Point of accountability to the customer.
- Keeping the customer informed on status and progress of incidents, changes etc.
- Co-ordinate internal and third-party efforts and escalations
- Parts dispatch, with four hour replacement from our Field Sparing Locations across North America.
- Service Level Management
Dedicated Parts Replacement
FlexITy’s Managed Services offering also provides our customers with DEDICATED spares in geography’s across North America and can also expand globally.
FlexITy has 55 field stocking locations across Canada with complete forward and reverse logistics servicing 99% of Canadian postal codes within 4 hours and 96 % of Canadian postal codes within 2 hours. We have over 500sq/ft per FSL with the ability to grow to over 1,000sq/ft per FSL within 48 hours notice. We will dedicate space on our racks for customers based on inventory required per FSL to service customer locations based on selected service levels. Our stocking strategy is based on ratios determined by mean time to failure (MTTF) of parts per manufacturer and required service levels. In addition, FlexITy have the capability to pull from FSL to FSL in a round robin fashion to ensure backup within 2/4 hours exists from FSL to FSL.
FlexITy has 263 field stocking locations across the US with complete forward and reverse logistics servicing 94 % of all US Zip Codes Covered within 4 Hours and 82% of US Zip Codes Covered within 2 hours
Problem and Root Cause Resolution
People and Processes are put in place to resolve problems quickly. Our TAC team takes full ownership and accountability for problem resolution as soon as the customer makes contact with our team and a case number is issued. If for any reason a case is moved to a different Customer Support Engineer (CSE) due to escalation, shift change or other, then the new CSE becomes the owner of that customer incident. The case will be updated to reflect the change and the customer will be notified automatically via email and via live call if required. The TAC CSE’s and the management team constantly monitor the ticketing queue to proactively ensure thresholds are not breached.
Three major sub-processes can take place while an incident is being resolved:
- Isolating the problem
- Reproducing the problem
- Identifying Repair or Workaround
- Determine and record Root Cause Corrective Action
All incidences are worked and cannot be closed until Root Cause Corrective Action is determine and recorded in the case history for future reporting and statistical analysis.
Customer Portal Access
Customer can access the TAC through our FlexVIEW web portal and gain direct access to our incident management ticketing system. The FlexVIEW Portal, provides the following functionality to an authorized customer:
- Open and log a new Case
- View all open cases in real time
- View all closed cases in real time
- Asset management
- Customized Secure Single Sign-On Web Portal Where Customers Can View
- Case Management
- Customized Reports and Metrics
- Asset Management Database
- Performance Management and Trending (NOC Monitoring Dashboard)
