Mercury Insurance is a $3.5B national insurance company providing a variety of insurance services including auto, home, renters, business and umbrella, to name a few. Mercury has agents across the US and significant data center infrastructure to support both internal and external requirements (agents and customers). Accordingly, Mercury has a significant portfolio of OEM and TPM maintenance contracts.
Problem
Mercury manages maintenance contracts from over 150 service providers across over 100 manufacturers. Prior to engaging with CloudCover, Mercury placed management of this array of contracts in the hands of their IT management team. 25 people managed a subset of the contracts and each managed them in different ways – Excel, SharePoint, Word, etc. This process also created the opportunity for costly and time-consuming errors. The CTO reports to the CFO and when periodic budget reviews or annual budget development was required, all the managers would convene and sort through each of their contract budgets, normalize them and build reports to deliver to the CFO. This was a time-consuming process requiring significant administrative support along with all the time of the IT Management team – keeping them away from running the IT business. The CTO wanted to streamline this process and requested support from CloudCover.
Solution
CloudCover’s budget module allows you to load all your contracts, budgets, associated assets and vendors in a normalized fashion so that everything is in a central repository to be viewed by whoever is assigned to do so. CloudCover worked with Mercury to gather all their contract data, load it into the CloudCover budget module, establish user rights, validate and go live. This process took approximately 1-week.
Result
Mercury now has a single view of all contracts, budgets and associated assets all of which is now maintained by 2-IT administrators rather than 25 IT managers. All data is current in real time and when budget reviews and the annual budget cycle occurs the data is already available and accurate. Significant internal cost and time savings resulted because the IT managers can continue to focus on their strategic responsibilities and the budget numbers are now controlled by only 2 people. The CTO is on record saying that the ROI on the CloudCover platform was less than six weeks and they are now in their 5th year of renewal.
Staples is widely recognized national brand selling business-focused products to consumers and businesses. Staples has more than 10,000 employees, operates out of 305 retail locations nationwide and has (6) national data centers along with headquarters and regional corporate offices. Staples has significant online presence supporting online buying, rebates and customer alliance programs.
Problem
As is common for many customers, Staples was in the market for a better maintenance solution for their existing network infrastructure (both current OEM equipment and EOL equipment). They had been a classic user of OEM-provided support but were generally dissatisfied due to inflexibility, complicated and constraining contracts, confusing renewal processes, varying end-dates, marginal performance and exorbitant cost. Staples was looking for a better alternative for some or all their existing network infrastructure and they began to consider third-party maintenance(TPM) as an additional option.
Solution
In 2018 an RFP was released and CloudCover – through a significant channel partner - was included as a respondent. Over several months and multiple customer meetings, CloudCover’s Partner (and thus, CloudCover) was awarded the business. This business was awarded primarily because the CloudCover platform offered a differentiated value proposition which gave Staples the ability to manage, measure and interact with their new maintenance program through a single, normalized portal. They solution provides the CloudCover Support Management platform along with national network support including TAC plus 8x5xNBD and TAC plus 24x7x4. Additionally, the solution supports both their TPM contracts with CloudCover along with all of their continuing OEM support, a true Hybrid Management model.
Result
Staples now has a significantly lower cost for maintenance and support by capitalizing on third party maintenance as a hybrid with their existing OEM support. All contracts – TPM and OEM – are managed in a single portal and all service activity is initiated, managed and measured through the CloudCover portal. They have 1500 devices under TPM support, with flexible terms, ease-of-use and co-termed end-dates. Staples is on record indicating millions of dollars of cost savings and they’re very happy with the solution as evidenced by the recent 2nd year renewal of the contract. Additionally, Staples wants to apply this solution to all their retail facilities which will triple their support footprint.
Server Monkey is a one-stop source for new and refurbished server and network equipment. They sell hundreds of server and network devices each month to blue-chip customers around the globe. In addition they provide installation services, IT asset disposition, maintenance & support, and they’ll also purchase your used equipment.
Problem
Server Monkey had always offered 1 -year hardware warranty on all the equipment they sold. This was at no cost to the customer and was a desirable value-add. The challenge was that Server Monkey was managing this warranty coverage internally at significant cost and time. Server Monkey also wanted to get involved in selling maintenance contracts as a new line of services for their company but did not have the experience or resources to start a service organization from the ground up. So, they engaged with CloudCover. For a period of time CloudCover acted as their backend for all TPM services. But there was a much larger opportunity.
Solution
With direct experience with their business, CloudCover saw an opportunity and worked with Server Monkey to create a new addition to their overall go-to-market strategy. CloudCover suggested that Server Monkey allow CloudCover to take over responsibility for all warranty support and add the ability to upsell warranty support to 8x5xNBD or 24x7x4 support. Server Monkey agreed and their Tekshield Service was born. CloudCover is now the comprehensive maintenance management platform and aggregated TPM support partner for the Tekshield service line. The platform is white-labeled as Tekshield and all support activity is managed by CloudCover 24x7 on a global basis – Server Monkey simply has to sell.
Result
This program has added 10% to Server Monkey’s revenue with significant margins and is compounding year-over-year as contracts are added and renewed.