UNICOM Engineering provides many areas of expertise for our clients, but our knowledge of server appliance design, manufacturing and quality practice is second to none. Combined with our agile partnership models and close working relationship with partners like Dell EMC, technology providers can attain rapid speed to market while responding to customer needs as they arise.
Such was the case with one client, a managed security provider that needed reliable hardware platforms operating in the field. The company had encountered frustration with unreliable units in the past, necessitating the need for dependable, long-lasting appliances coupled with services that could improve customer experience.
In the end, UNICOM Engineering was able to help them grow their business by 40 percent while improving their reputation through consistent product and customer service experiences. Coupled with our ability to forecast future inventory needs, we helped our client attain a market advantage and a stellar reputation.
Always-On Service Means Around the Clock Reliability
Our client offered 24-hour intrusion monitoring services as their primary product. In order to facilitate this monitoring, they required appliance units to be installed on-site at each customer enterprise. The units sent data back to their main data center, which would use statistical analysis along with the most recent security practices to detect threats before they could enact major damage.
Therefore, the efficacy of their monitoring services hinged greatly upon the performance of each in-field appliance unit. Finding a supplier of such units meant more than just build-to-spec services; it also meant they required a partner with expertise in platform lifecycle management and deployment resources. After examining possibilities based on five criteria — procedure, process, scale, pricing and quality — they decided that UNICOM Engineering exceeded all other competitors, especially within our quality practices.
To start our partnership, we worked with Dell’s OEM Solutions Group to develop a custom design based on Dell’s PowerEdge enterprise-class servers. Immediately they were able to achieve the power, quality and scalability they wanted along with real cost savings and the respect of the Dell name.
UNICOM Engineering then worked to future-proof the platform for application compatibility, performance and reliability.These efforts and the ability to do evaluation testing upfront, later enabled the company to issue 10 new software updates within a year without rendering the existing hardware obsolete. These solutions were built in rapid time, as well — going from a finalized deal to new platforms shipping within 4 months.
Achieving Service Excellence Through Flexibility
Flexibility is often one of those benefits that are hard to quantify at first, but once you experience it first hand it is hard to envision working with a partner that doesn’t offer it. UNICOM Engineering takes pride in our ability to be flexible and nimble to our customer needs. This client wanted to offer flexibility to its customer base in the way they sell and deliver their product. To accommodate this request and deliver a critical competitive advantage, we enabled our client to determine the exact platform configuration at the point of sale. We then assembled the platform as requested while provisioning the system with a hostname and IP address ready-to-ship the next day.
These speed-to-ship factors also enabled us to greatly improve our client’s service capabilities. Since their offerings depended so heavily on platform functionality, the average 3 to 5 business day replacement window on inoperable platforms was completely unacceptable. After partnering with UNICOM Engineering, the replacement units were ready to ship same-day for orders placed before noon and arrived on their customer’s premises within one business day.
The End Result
Together, we were able to dramatically improve our partner’s reputation and service by achieving industry-leading reliability. They referred to us as a “Force Multiplier” because they were able to grow their business by more than 40% in a single year. Ultimately, they were able to focus on their core competency of delivering the very best security services to customers, without having to strain their resources on critical business functions such as hardware performance requirements, inventory management and global logistics.
To find out how we can help you scale to the top of your industry, take a look at our industry specific application deployment offerings fitting a variety of situation-specific needs.
You can also contact us today with any questions about what we can do for you.