Agilitas Innovation Supports CDW Growth

CDW began to speak to Agilitas about how they could innovate and improve their service to customers in 2013.Taking a forward thinking view, examining ‘the art of the possible’ together the two companies closely examined how the IT parts and logistics operation was being managed, looking where innovation could be introduced to deliver both efficiencies and service improvement. Agilitas set out by building a data discovery plan that clearly identified supported IT inventory, SLA requirements and geographic locations across all customer sites.

Warren Playford, Account Director at Agilitas explains, “for CDW the customer experience was key, they had built a strong and reliable reputation for service excellence and any changes could not put that at risk. The project had three clear objectives. First was to maintain or improve the customer experience, second was to reduce operating costs and finally, to deliver a more flexible operating model moving forward.”

Agilitas began by introducing its Inventory Assure service: an inventory management solution available at a fixed monthly cost. It removes CAPEX headaches and allows IT firms to be more responsive to the needs of their customers by focusing on delivering the overall solution. CDW can be safe in the knowledge that hardware on support is located close to customer sites, accessible up to a two hour SLA 24/7/365. The agreement saw CDW drive efficiency savings by outsourcing portions of stock and service delivery.

As part of the solution, Agilitas took control of a number of CDW spare parts, incorporating them into their own stock. This meant CDW could reduce dependence on expensive forward stocking locations (FSLs) holding large amounts of stock and save money through adopting an operational rather than capital expenditure model to supporting the ever changing needs of customers IT parts and logistics operation.

“We had a real desire to reduce the IT spares inventory we were holding” explains Thomas. “We kept asking ourselves, are we holding the right amount of kit to facilitate the service expectation of our clients?

We had always invested in enough stock, but the nature of parts logistics meant we could have too much in one location and not enough in another to meet the SLA’s of our rapidly expanding supported contracts base. Balancing costs with precise stock planning to increase stock availability in order to retain high SLA’s was a key motivation behind working with Agilitas.”

• Improved SLA performance
• Transition from a CAPEX to an OPEX model
• Reduction in quote turnaround times
• Upskilled engineers through training courses
• Enhanced service proposition

The value of the implementation is clear through multiple aspects of the CDW business, from sales to implementation. The partnership between Agilitas and CDW has been beneficial to both companies, with each providing different skills expertise to strengthen bids and service. CDW sales people all have access to Agilitas price books, meaning quotes for inventory support can be delivered seamlessly as part of wider IT solutions.

Playford explains “CDW has built an enviable reputation across the industry as one of the leading IT solution providers. A big part of this success is down to building partnerships with ‘best-of-breed’ specialist service firms such as Agilitas who add value to their overall service proposition.

The standard of delivery has also been very high, with SLAs in excess of 98% achieved across the entire supported contract base. Enhancing engineering skills within CDW has also been supported through attending Agilitas technical training courses across server, storage and networking technologies.

Playford continues “Our relationship with CDW has gone from strength-to-strength as a result of Agilitas’ service excellence and ability to quickly adapt to the ever-changing needs of CDW’s rapidly growing business.”

As Thomas explains, “the partnership has provided both companies with access to an even wider market. We both have expertise in different areas, Agilitas in more technical issues and us the global IT market.”

“The Agilitas team are great to work with; always open, responsive, committed to innovation and available 24/7/365, they treat our customers as their own. I look forward to continuing to grow our strategic partnership across multiple territories, driving great results and delivering the highest possible level of service.”