• September 28, 2011

WBM to Construct 3 IT Infrastructure Operations Centres Across Western Canada

WBM has announced a significant investment into the Western Canadian IT Community, with plans to design and construct a world class Infrastructure Operations Centre.

The project will consist of a central facility located within the WBM headquarters in Saskatoon, and two regional nodes,one located in Regina, and the other located in Calgary.

The facilities will borrow on the commonly known NOC (Network Operation Centre) concept, which utilizes a team of technical operatives, heads up monitoring utilities and wall displays, and mission critical technical support processes to ensure aggressive SLA’s and uptime across network nodes, and apply these same utilities, processes, and concepts to the monitoring and support of WBM’s managed device level infrastructure programs.

This includes end user devices such as desktop, notebook, printer, MFP, and communications, most of which are already under WBM support, either through break and fix arrangements, or managed utility models. Regional nodes will monitor device level support SLA’s and utilize GPS enabled technical resource tracking to achieve new levels of efficiencies in WBM’s already strong technical support program.

The IOC will be a world class facility, meaning that as leading systems, tools, processes, and people are identified, WBM is committed to bringing them together to create what will be the first facility of its kind in Canada.

The WBM IOC will ultimately be a seven figure investment into the growth and development of the Western Canadian IT community, and will become a hallmark of the WBM support organization.

The Opportunity to Achieve a National Leadership Position in Device Level Infrastructure Support

As a motivated participant in our IT community, WBM has grown to the point that the organization is involved in many large IT infrastructures to some degree, including many comprehensive managed support initiatives. This growth has created the critical mass of

work in the area of IT support required to drive such an initiative:

WBM Fiscal 2010 Corporate Results : Service Organization Metrics

Volume of Operations:

  • Number of work orders completed, WBM 2010: 28,816
  • Number of IT Projects Completed, WBM 2010: 355
  • Number of Printed Pages Under Managed Governance, WBM 2010: 155,000,000

Geographic Support Area:

  • Number of Cities/Towns with WBM devices under management, 2010: 344
    (including devices in every major centre in Saskatchewan, 10 Canadian
    provinces, and 4 US states.)

Organizational Growth Rate:

  • Percentage growth in devices under Management, WBM 2010 YoY: 80.8%

Once completed, the WBM IOC will allow each of WBM’s key Enterprise IT partners to benefit from a world class support facility, and WBM’s announced intention to achieve and maintain world class status means that the organization will look to its closest partners for input and continued guidance and advice as to what is required to ensure that strategic objectives are consistently being met as a result of the IOC initiative.

The Opportunity to Invest in the Success of Key Strategic Partners

For any organization to grow along a sustainable path, it must have the privilege and ability to transcend the role of basic supplier, and become a strategic partner. Strategic partners share a mutual understanding of the vision held for each organization, and a clear role exists for each in ensuring that the vision is achieved.

The WBM Infrastructure Operations Center is a decisive effort to be the undisputed national leader in the support of device level technologies, including tangible and measurable leadership in the follow areas of device level support:

  • Best in Class End User Satisfaction
  • Best in Class Infrastructure Availability
  • Best in Class Response and Resolution Times
  • Best in Class Infrastructure Visibility and Monitoring
  • Best in Class Help Desk Integration
  • Best in Class Reporting and Governance

As a citizen within the IT community, WBM has had the privilege of being part of and working alongside our clients as they have achieved best practices, innovation, and bleeding edge technology solutions, and the IOC is our entry into the already impressive roster of our clients IT success stories.

“This is not a build it and they will come initiative, nor is it a marketing effort to differentiate our offering. WBM is already working with our partners every day to support their infrastructure and achieve their stated SLA’s, and the IOC is our investment in taking everything that we are already doing, and doing it better.

We must always provide our partners with the comfort that comes with knowing that we are not just standing still, but investing in always being the best, and in the achievement of previously unattainable results. The WBM IOC is specifically defined as being world class in stature, meaning very simply that if we find a better way, anywhere, whether it is a process, a utility, or even an individual, that we must immediately find a way to achieve at or above that level.”

JoeAnne Hardy
President
WBM Office Systems

Timelines & Additional Information

While no timeframe for completion of the IOC, (and achievement of the WBM BHAG objective) has been set, significant work is underway toward the initiative since the internal announcement to WBM staff in November of 2010.

Facilities

Work on the WBM IOC physical facilities has commenced, with demolition and construction on the Regina Regional Node commencing in January of 2011 at the company’s 414 MacDonald Street location. Completion date for the Regina facility was targeted for March 2011 and has been successfully accomplished.

Designs have been drafted for the primary facility in the Saskatoon head office as well, however a construction start date has not yet been put in place.

Technologies

WBM has partnered with Pittsburgh based Zenith InfoTech, whose own Network Operations Center is now providing monitoring and remote resolution services to several WBM partners, and whose 600 technical staff will provide the WBM IOC with a level of redundancy and 24X7 support across our existing managed IT services model.

Additional monitoring technologies are being tested across the print infrastructure arena, as the IOC will see WBM bring together our existing competencies around HPWebJetAdmin and Fleet Manager, Lexmark Markvision utilities, and Ricoh @Remote monitoring and reporting tools.

In addition, WBM has certified and achieved partner status with RPS Print Assessor, Print Director utilities, which provide cross platform visibility into device status and reporting.
WBM has selected a unified Call Centre architecture from within our own suite of NEC/Mitel technologies, designed to provide a pleasant end user experience, a central call center management display, unified messaging, and outlook integrated presence for exceptional accessibility to WBM resources and team members.

We will be implementing these tools into the existing Customer Care Centre as they become the lifeblood of the future IOC organization.

WBM is also almost a year into a development project that will see the company utilize Microsoft AX to provide performance dashboards customize to key metrics across each of the company’s  service delivery areas, ensuring transparency and visibility into the success levels being achieved at all times.

People

As WBM has grown, we find ourselves with the incredible privilege of having a great team. As much as the IOC is an investment into the Saskatchewan IT Community and the success of our closest partners, it is also an investment into the professional careers of our people.

The IOC will incorporate the following existing teams across WBM delivery model, bringing them together to understand clearly the effort and the successes they are achieving as a single unit.

These are the processes and methodologies that are already being delivered as services to our partners, and the IOC will provide tools and direction to drive these services to ensure we are providing an organization and a model that is world class is nature.

  • WBM Customer Care Center
  • WBM Project Management Office
  • WBM regional Service Coordination
  • WBM Systems Engineers
  • WBM Technology Deployment Teams
  • WBM Print Technicians
  • WBM Desktop Technicians
  • WBM Telecommunications / Network Technicians

For Additional Information

As we work toward the achievement of our objective to create a world class Infrastructure Operations Centre right here in Saskatchewan, we welcome and need the input, ideas, and questions of our partners across the IT Community.

 

Please feel free to speak with your Client Relationship Manager, or to contact WBM directly at the coordinates below:

Brett Bailey
Vice President
WBM Office Systems
(306) 664-2686 ext 7404
bbailey@wbm.ca

JoeAnne Hardy
President
WBM Office Systems
(306) 664-2686 ext 7510
jhardy@wbm.ca

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