Mid-size customers need a unique approach: Erinwood Ford
In the first post in our series on the mid-market, we looked at a Toronto-based Cisco partner, IT PRO CANADA, which focuses solely on installing Cisco solutions to mid-market customers. In this post we’ll review advice from IT PRO CANADA co-founder David Lee and review a solution which involved a challenging wireless install.
At Cisco Canada, I’m proud to say we have amazing partners all across the country. I love working with partners because they bring talent, expertise and great ideas about Cisco technology to solution building. Our partners come in all sizes and specialties, some are small and vertically focused, while others are large and broad in scope. Each brings their own unique approach to customers and solutions.
IT PRO CANADA is a relatively new Cisco partner but its founders are no strangers to our technology. David Lee, co-founder and CEO of IT PRO CANADA, is a licensed Professional Engineer and experienced consultant with multiple Cisco certifications, including the CCIE Voice. IT PRO CANADA’s other principal consultants each have over 10 years of IT infrastructure design and implementation experience.
As a Cisco Premiere Partner, IT PRO CANADA is focused on small and mid-market customers. Being consultant led and operated, the company is able to react to the complex and changing needs of customers, picking up where other solutions have come up short.
Rebecca Leach: One of your recent engagements included a customer with existing, but outdated, infrastructure that needed a significant upgrade. Can you tell us about how you helped them?
David Lee: We worked with Erinwood Ford in Mississauga. They were running equipment that needed to be upgraded and we were recommended by one of their existing vendors who only dealt with PCs. They asked us to look at their network refresh, and we saw that both Erinwood’s switches as well as their phone solution needed to be updated.
Rebecca Leach: Were there any challenges you faced with the deployment?
David Lee: In this case, Erinwood had a large auto shop with very high ceilings and lots of large metallic objects. Because of these obstructions their current wireless system, built on consumer-grade equipment, was not able to provide adequate coverage for the technicians working on vehicles.
It sounds simple but at the end of the day, what we did was apply the proper solution for the customer. It’s a rugged, challenging environment, so we put in a rugged, challenging type access point that gave them the wireless coverage they needed.
Rebecca Leach: You mentioned you were recommended, were you able to extend the engagement by offering support services?
David Lee: That’s the second half of the engagement. Once we came in and were able to deploy the proper solution, we needed to follow up by delivering an appropriate response time. It’s essential that when a business like this asks for changes to be made that we’re giving them a response time that’s appropriate for a mid-market customer. A customer like Erinwood Ford can’t wait a week for a change to be made, they need it to be done the next day.
Rebecca Leach: Was there anything in particular from Cisco that helped your engagement?
David Lee: From a Cisco perspective, what really helped us on this deal was Cisco Capital. The fact that Cisco was able to have that system in place for us to offer the customer, that was really advantageous.
My thanks to David for taking the time to speak with us about IT PRO CANADA and their customers, Caldic Canada and Erinwood Ford.
If you’re a mid-size business and want to learn how technology can help your company, visit http://www.cisco.com/web/CA/midsize/index.html.
About David Lee
David Lee is the co-founder and CEO of IT PRO CANADA. He is an experienced consultant, holding multiple Cisco certifications including the CCIE Voice. David is also a licensed Professional Engineer with a Masters in Engineering. IT PRO CANADA is a Cisco Premiere Partner, focusing on the small and mid-market. IT PRO CANADA leverages the rich experience of its consultants to develop comprehensive technological solutions that fit customers’ business needs. You can visit IT PRO CANADA online at http://www.itprocanada.ca/.
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