1. Good morning to you all, and thanks to GFI MAX for giving me
this opportunity to say a few words to this great crowd.
As you have noticed, I am reading my speech, and you might be
wondering why…
The real reason is that I don´t speak English very well, so I made
a wise decision to just read my speech. However, knowing
myself, I know I will make a couple of mistakes… So, I apologize
in advance.
2. My name is Cristiano, I´m originally from Brazil, I have a
Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, specializing in computer
science.
I am also the owner and director of my own business, CLS
and we have been providing IT services and products for
many years.
We are also partners with Microsoft, Comptia and many
other manufacturers.
3. In general we do the same as most of you here: we fix
computers, printers and UPSs. We give preventive and
corrective assistance in Servers and IT infrastructure to
many companies in and around the city of Vitória in the
State of Espirito Santo.
Up to the end of 2013 we used to work without any specific
tools or integrated monitoring system. It was very difficult
to predict problems. We basically solved problems as they
appeared.
4. Most issues were then always considered an emergency by our
customers and no matter what we did, we could never get them
to be satisfied with our services.
Even if we solved all their system’s problems, they were still not
happy. Why? Because what they really wanted was for us to solve
the problem before it happened.
It was very difficult to provide remote assistance, because each
customer had a different remote tool, mostly not licensed, and
piracy ruled. Besides they don’t know how to use a remote access
tool. We used to spend more time trying to connect to our
clients’ devices, than solving the customers’ problem itself.
5. Another problem was, if we had too many customers, we
needed more people to get the job done. More people
meant more expenses. It also meant more effort to
contrôl those extra people.
Companies of our size in Brazil hardly use SLAs or ticket
tracking. Some try to use open source tools but there is
no integration, and the effort for setup and maintenance
discourages many of them.
6. In December 2013, we met GFI MAX at a Conference in
Sao Paulo. When I asked if MAX was a remote access
tool, the answer was yes. Then I asked if MAX monitored
computers and servers, the answer was also yes. Does it
have inventóry? Yes. Antivirus? Yes. GFI MAX had
everything I asked for and needed. I was fascinated and
immediately started a trial.
After two months, all of our client’s devices had the
agents installed.
7. Our strategy was first to install and demonstrate the
bénêfits of the new tool, without increasing the price.
We spent about six months fixing problems, reporting to
clients, and getting their trust by shôwing the quality of
our service. Then we started implementing MAV and MOB,
now charging a little more and increasing our rêvenue.
Since then, all new contracts and renewals of old ones are
executed with higher prices.
8. I realized that it was what the market needed and wanted.
A company acting more preventívely, with integration of
tools, a ticket system and an efficient SLA.
The cost of MAV, MOB and Web Protection are ínteresting
for companies who cannot invest a high sum of money in
the most known solutions in Brazil. Which is preçáisely the
area of our expertíse.
Our satisfaction rate reached a very high level. My team
has reduced in size. We serve more customers with fewer
employees.
9. We learned that the MSP should have at least three things to work efficiently:
1) Network Operations Center - My team get an overview on a large screen in
my office. It continually refreshes when any new problem arises, allowing us
to fix it quickly, before users suffer downtime.
2) Remote Monitoring with MAX RemoteManagement - This tool allowed my IT
team to stay ahead when it comes to availability, performance and users’
experience problems. Now, small issues are solved before they become
worse.
3) Tickets and SLA with MAX ServiceDesk is a very efficient and easy to
configure helpdesk tool. This tool increased our productivity and support
processes.
10. Now we are entering a new stage. Providing backup,
antivirus and web protection to our customers. We also
want to get large companies as our customers outside of
our city, and this is being made possible with MAX.
Thank you all for listening. Once again, thank you very
much!
