Rorke Data's Secret to Centralized Help Desk Success

By Christine Callahan 2

help desk services ismo

Headquartered in Eden Praire, MN, Rorke Data offers a broad range of hardware and software solutions with an emphasis on storage integration. Partnering with large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Rorke provides packaged storage solutions and services to the healthcare IT, digital publishing and audio visual industries.

Rorke’s Professional Services department is responsible for integrating OEM specific software with high-end storage hardware and delivering an all-in-one solution to the customer.

What’s the Challenge?

An observation from Rorke, is the storage industry has undergone consolidation and attrition. Customers have a need for support of products from companies that are no longer in business. Some manufacturers have announced end of service life on many products that are still being utilized.

Rorke recognized that end users wanted to extend their investment in end-of-life (EOL) or end-of-service (EOS) equipment. However, users simply did not have a lot of options for getting this type of equipment serviced and supported. This provided an opportunity for Rorke to leverage their existing infrastructure and years of storage expertise to provide support for these systems by offering flexible and affordable service level agreements, migration and integration services.

In addition to providing support on EOL and EOS hardware as well as integrated vertical solutions, Rorke wanted to grow its professional services revenue by providing a centralized help desk (single point of contact) for their customers.

According to Lori Thrune, professional services account manager, “Not only does this strategy help Rorke Data increase revenues by offering support on systems we did not necessarily sell, it’s a value add to our customers, eliminating the time they spend managing multiple service agreements.”

Now the Solution

Rorke Data has partnered with ServiceKey to provide dedicated technical account managers (TAMs). “ServiceKey extends its expertise in a managed services role by providing hardware maintenance, warranty support, reporting, monitoring and closed loop customer support all under the Rorke Data brand”, stated Thrune. “ServiceKey provides the single point of contact through its TAMs and remains transparent to the end user.”

ServiceKey has the ability to augment Rorke’s professional services through the support of multi-vendor platforms. Because ServiceKey’s technical account managers are trained on most storage solutions, Rorke now extends migration services and support on systems it did not sell or install. Rorke, having a centralized help desk and providing multi-vendor service, creates a support model that maximizes up time for customers. This eliminates multi-vendor support conflicts.

Thrune also stated, “Rorke chose ServiceKey, the master Independent Service Maintenance Organization (ISMO), because this type of partnership saves Rorke and their customers’ time and ultimately money. And by never selling directly to our customers, ServiceKey does not compete with us for business.”

As the master ISMO, ServiceKey provides completely customizable service level contracts that allow Rorke Data to pick and choose the technical service solutions that are right for their organization and customers. In addition, ServiceKey helps Rorke adhere to ISO and customer standards.

Now the Solution

ServiceKey provides both direct and indirect profitability. Competitive pricing combined with volume and site discounts directly correlate to increased profitability for Rorke. The bigger and less obvious increase in profitability comes from the ability to capture more business due to process implemented by ServiceKey on our behalf.

ServiceKey represents Rorke like no other service provider. ServiceKey’s ability to pass quarterly audits that follow our standards increases our brand within our market and grows our business and increase profitability while streamlining processes.

By providing multi-vendor support, Rorke is now able to support many platforms. This has helped them grow their professional services business, making them more profitable.

Thrune said, “Quality of service and customer satisfaction has improved. Customer satisfaction surveys have seen a spike in positive feedback and a marked improvement in customer satisfaction ratings”.

Customers have said, “It used to take a week to get service problems resolved. Now, over 90% of our service calls are resolved the next day.” Reporting statistics prove that parts and field engineers meet the requirement of next business day service over 99% of the time.

Metrics for Success

Partnering with ServiceKey, the effective consolidation of vendors has resulted in Rorke getting better pricing, more responsiveness and better service all around.

In addition, contract renewal reporting is guaranteed. ServiceKey tracks and feeds renewal dates 90 days prior to expiration insuring the warranty renewals are kept up-to-date and that Rorke continues to profit from recurring revenue opportunities.

ServiceKey supports products that are end of life or end of service therefore no longer supported by the manufacturer. Rorke has a large volume of customers with products no longer supported by the manufacturer and they are now able to provide support for those systems as well, something very few systems integrators can do. “This puts us ahead of our competitors and positions us to take advantage of migration opportunities with our customers”, Thrune commented.

Christine Callahan