“Other services providers seemed to be selling us the solution they wanted—you engaged, listened, and gave us the solution we wanted.”

– Senior Director, Networking, Data Center, and Infrastructure Services

Challenges

A major U.S. banking and automobile finance firm was experiencing significant market growth while transitioning its workforce from in-office to hybrid office / work from home. This placed tremendous new demands and requirements on their corporate network, which did not have a formalized Network Operations Center (NOC). They were instead relying upon expensive network architects and senior engineers with 10-15 years of experience to perform what should have been NOC functions. This took these valuable people away from needed, value-adding projects.

Previous experience by the firm with a contact center outsourcer had been frustrating. They felt that they were not getting the attention and level of performance that they wanted from their service provider. Based on this experience, a key requirement was to find a service provider that would be a partner to them, not just a vendor. They wanted a service provider that would be flexible and develop a solution with them—not for them.

Our solution

Celsior understood the challenge of establishing a NOC and leveraging investments already made by the firm. Just as importantly, Celsior was willing to co-create a solution with the firm. This flexibility and the importance that Celsior was willing to give the firm were key reasons that Celsior was selected over four other service providers. The firm was very impressed by the iterative, facilitated joint creation of the solution with Celsior. It was definitely not “our way or the highway.”

The Celsior solution guaranteed knowledge transfer and the firm was even given the option to bring the NOC personnel in-house after one year if Celsior was not adding sufficient value.

From a technical standpoint, Celsior worked with the firm to analyze their network operating model, alerts, and ticket history. The jointly conceived solution established a formal NOC function, tools, architecture, knowledge base, and run books, utilizing a balanced team of senior and intermediate-level network administrators and engineers. The transition phase was 90 days and successfully established a formalized NOC function, with service-level metrics and compliance, integrated seamlessly within the overall IT operations of the firm.

Business outcomes

Taking greater advantage of existing network tools enabled increased efficiencies and more proactive support and issue resolution. Over time, first calls with NOC personnel have resolved 93 percent of issues. The initial quarterly review with the organization on the NOC was exemplary. There were no issues—the firm simply thanked Celsior for the job well done and discussed the potential expansion of Celsior’s scope to extend the success.

At the same time, deployment of the NOC alleviated the organization’s network architect and engineer resource constraints and allowed their personnel to focus on more strategic, higher-value initiatives.

After one year, the organization determined that the original model of 7 AM to 7 PM support with on-call support during nights and weekends was insufficient. It was accordingly agreed to move to 5/24 support with only weekends on call. This was done by Celsior at no incremental cost to the organization.

Overall, the relationship put in place an SLA framework that enabled systemic improvement and more predictable network operations response and resolution for achieving business objectives.