Many of the clients who approach us at UNICOM Engineering are looking for ways to expand or scale, but others simply want our help in managing the complex, resource-consuming process of designing purpose-built server solutions, building those units, shipping and ultimately supporting them in the field. As they offload these duties onto us, we can help them free up internal resources for more focus on innovation, improvement and brand management. We can also help them free up working capital that is tied up in inventory. In the end, these partnerships often create unexpected benefits based on the many efficiencies that a value-added integration partner can provide.
The following case study, which concerns a globally deployed WAN Orchestration solution provider, illustrates the way this type of partnership can help already-successful businesses get the support they need to become something even greater.
UNICOM Engineering Shoulders the Burden of Manufacturing and Global Logistics
The partner in this particular case study already had a program where they deployed appliance based solutions to customers and enterprise partners around the globe. The company has helped more than 3,500 organizations in over 100 countries assure application performance, improve the end-user experience, contain recreational applications and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive.
The only problem was that all deployments were managed internally. This portion of their operation not only taxed labor and capital resources, but it also placed constraints on their abilities to grow. Over $1.5 million in working capital would be locked within inventory held on their balance sheets at any given time. The company also dealt with three global logistics hubs, introducing service level challenges and trade compliance issues on a regular basis.
Seeking to alleviate themselves of these burdens, they turned to UNICOM Engineering.
Our first task in this new partnership was to help them revamp their appliance products by simultaneously making them cheaper to manufacture yet more powerful in the field. Using Intel Silvermont low power system on chip (SoC) microarchitecture, we were able to double the effective bandwidth of their appliances while cutting costs in half. As a result, they were able to open up new opportunities among price-sensitive customer niches.
In addition to our appliance design, consulting and manufacturing services, our partner was also able to take advantage of our operational support and our global logistics and compliance capabilities. We assisted them with inventory forecasts, customization requests, hardware transitions, refurbishments and warranty claims processing, among other critical tasks.
Not Just a Global Logistics Partner, but a Company Representative
As our client allowed us to assume responsibility for global shipping, compliance and product support, they quickly realized that they gained so much more than process efficiencies. Acting as an extension of their internal operations team, we helped our client with everything from customer order fulfillment to facilitating repairs to fostering relationships with third party vendors.
Our client’s customers enjoyed five-day order processing and delivery times, as well as three-day shipping on return merchandise authorization (RMA) tickets to fulfill the company’s promised 24 hour turnaround time.
UNICOM Engineering’s global shipping and logistics capabilities also simplified the partner’s compliance and international order fulfillment tasks, helped along by our installation of client-focused teams. Inventory management likewise excelled.
All of these service benefits resulted in our client improving their ability to maintain communications with customers and forge lasting relationships. With deployments in over 100 countries, they also maintained a consistent level of service excellence, enhancing their brand reputation in ways that solidified their position as a market leader in WAN solutions.
You can unlock the potential within your own organization by tapping into the powerful capabilities that UNICOM Engineering can provide. UNICOM Engineering’s holistic approach to solution design and delivering value-add services allows customers to better focus on creating innovative solutions and gaining market share—not hardware, inventory, OS vulnerabilities, logistics or support. To learn more, 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.