Elements include special assistance to alleviate supply chain pressure, access to supplementary technical support capacity, consolidation of multiple vendor solutions and offers, and advice on finance and currency volatility, all part of its business continuity measures that aim to support partners through tough trading conditions ahead.
Exclusive is making available its extensive technical support capabilities as both partners and vendors endeavour to manage the increased demand on their resources. Partners can request fast access to pre- and post-sales engineering support. For example, to assist with peak demand for configuration and deployment and as overflow for customer help desks, freeing up partner engineering resource to end user customers operating in front-line sectors such as health care and public services.
Wrapped around this is practical support to safeguard the security and performance of customer homeworking initiatives, and the wellbeing of isolated workers. Exclusive is also aggregating the best of the COVID-19 support measures put in place by its vendor community, accelerating and easing access for overstretched reseller partners from a single point of contact.
“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary actions and people, and I’m proud to say the response of our teams and partners has been exceptionally professional, whilst compassionate and caring,” added Barrie Desmond, SVP Marketing & Communications at Exclusive Networks. “Despite the severity, uncertainty and rapidly changing nature of the situation, the willingness of our people to adapt and maintain service and support, in close harmony with our vendors and channel partners, is a great testament to the spirit, camaraderie, resolve and resilience in the channel.”
“The Partner Support Hub is our attempt to simplify the considerations any partner would have in maintaining the customer experience, employee wellbeing and productivity, which are crucial when our partner’s resources are under such demand. There is a certain amount of communication fatigue in the channel and end users at the moment, with propositions coming from every angle, some even appearing opportunistic,” continued Desmond.
Key support measures available on request are:
Business Continuity & Sustainability
•Drop ship services
•Customer direct deliveries
•Backup storage and holding
•Credit control assistance
•Currency volatility management
Support
•Pre- and post-sales engineering (complimentary where appropriate)
•Rapid response support for essential services customers and front-line workers
•Overflow help desk
•Quick start education packages
•Access to virtual training rooms in local language
Protection
•Express deployment of remote workforce solutions
•Extended free trial periods for key technologies
Productivity
•Application performance and expansion solutions – web & on-prem
•Network performance upgrades for massive increase in traffic & concurrent user contention
•Extending Corporate resources for Virtual Machines & VDI
•Provision for Infrastructure stress & failure – DR, Backup and archiving
People
•Employee and customer user wellbeing resources
•Cyber safeguarding resources and training
•Communications advice and best practice
“The initiative not only helps partners make the right technology choices, it’s designed to get IT going and to keep IT going. That’s one of the benefits of having so many talented Exclusive engineers available to act as a proxy for pre and post engineering and support. With so many novice home workers now dispersed, it is important to consider their wellbeing and safeguarding. For nearly all of us, this is a new experience. Keeping the lights on now and preparing to sustain partner businesses during this crazy time is critical, so we’re offering any assistance we can in terms of business continuity and stability,” Desmond concluded.