• July 25, 2022

• Tessco News

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If you are a communication equipment supplier, installer, or service provider and have a goal of increasing your service revenue, a great way to do that is with a Service-Level Agreements (SLAs).

What’s an SLA and Why You Should Use One?

An SLA is a contract that defines:

• Scope of services to be provided
• Quality and standards of the services
• Time frames in which the services will be completed
• Those who are responsible for delivering services

The SLA outlines the responsibilities of each party, and everyone signs off on their list of obligations, including the customer.

The most important parts of an SLA are (1) defining a time frame for milestones and benchmarks, (2) designing a standardized process of communication, and (3) composing a document that establishes trust.

SLAs not only add value and enhance your relationship, but they also make the annual contract worth more. The SLA reminds everyone involved of their responsibilities and ensures they remain focused on them throughout the year.

Ultimately, SLAs protect the client’s accountability, improve revenue and retention, and create defined communications.

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Consistent and Meaningful Communications with Clients

When looking at sales success, sales professionals know the importance of maintaining open and frequent communication with customers. However, due to time constraints and other factors, that rarely happens in the real world.

That’s where SLAs come in and help keep open communications between service providers and customers. A good SLA will not only clearly define services and expectations of both parties, it also helps to continue to build and improve the relationship with the customer and, in turn, improve retention rates and potentially grow accounts. An SLA will also help you:

• Keep in touch with changes to the customer’s business over time
• Bring new ideas and solutions with a direct return on investment
• Address any concerns along the way

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Service Organizations Face a Number of Challenges when Increasing the Number of SLAs being Managed

• Ability to maintain a high-quality service level
• Resource constraints
• Increase in capital expenditures (equipment, trucks, etc.)
• Ability to track and manage service through the complete process.

Many of these challenges can be improved by increasing the efficiency of your service organization.

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Improve the Efficiency of Your Service Team

One way to improve the efficiency of your service team is to deploy a remote monitoring solution to track all your customers and their equipment. A good remote monitoring and configuration solution will improve efficiencies and save on resources, equipment, tracking, and therefore maintain a high level of service.

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Challenges in Finding the Right Remote Monitoring Platform for Your Organization

Many remote monitoring systems are focused on IT services for computer and network monitoring and with so many solutions to choose from, where do you start?

Here are some things to consider:

1. Ease of Deployment
2. Remote desktop applications (cloud-based)
3. Dashboard functionality
4. Integration features
5. Reporting
6. Pricing
7. Security
8. Understand your needs and your industry applications to ensure they align with the platform features and capabilities

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Features You Should Expect from a Remote Monitoring Solution

• Secure login with full details of all equipment being monitored
• View of all equipment being monitored from a single pane of glass to easily track devices, heartbeats, and alerts
• A vendor and device agnostic solution to monitor all your customers’ devices no matter the brand or device type
• Customizable dashboards to oversee device topologies, device statistics, and view critical parameter statuses
• Set up email and/or SMS notifications based on device conditions and rules for field service windows (avoid too many notifications or false notifications)
• Remotely update the configuration or software of a single device or group of devices
• Set up triggers for desired outcomes based on device or interface conditions/measures
• Visualizations of various device interface measures & their up/down statuses
• Ability to organize devices into hierarchical groups and accounts
• Remotely configure network settings and SNMP attributes for devices under management
• Know exactly what to expect when your crew goes out on a truck roll
• Integration with existing systems in place (i.e., ticketing systems)
• Cloud-based platform with a low cost of deployment
• No onsite server or software to own and maintain
• Quick and easy solution to deploy to you and/or all your customers
• Customize and meet your changing needs

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Introducing the Tessco Observer Platform

Tessco offers a device-agnostic management platform that provides end-to-end monitoring and management of all supported devices in a multi-vendor network. It is called Tessco Observer. This service is offered in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and is customizable and scalable to meet each customer’s unique needs.

The Tessco Observer platform helps mitigate the challenges of remotely managing devices across a multi-vendor environment by providing users with a secure, web-based management portal containing real-time measurements, insight, and configuration capabilities.

Why choose the Tessco Observer platform?

We can help with an affordable cost-effective solution to track all your equipment no matter the brand or type. We are a vendor agnostic solution that allows you to monitor and track all your equipment and all your customers under a single pane of glass. Contact us for more information or to schedule a demo.

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