We are using them to augment our engineering capacity. They are involved with our ServiceNow configuration engineering.
It's hard to retain and find people with the right skill sets. CDW ServiceNow Solutions provided us with capacity quickly. They are generally of high caliber and have enabled us to quickly meet our goals.
For example, they were instrumental in our achieving a re-baselining project. We were taking two legacy ServiceNow instances and combining them into a single, vanilla platform. With CDW's capacity, we were able to achieve our goals.
Before implementing anything, CDW sat down with us to learn about our current state and desired business outcomes. The results we achieved from our ServiceNow implementation are stronger than they would have been if CDW hadn't taken the time to understand our goals.
The feature of their service that has been most valuable is their ability to code without many errors and to configure the product to meet our business requirements.
CDW's expertise, when it comes to ServiceNow and ServiceNow best practices, is strong. They seem to grasp the business concepts well. They don't need a lot of translation and they tend to respond well when an error has been determined. They don't debate and say, "It's my way or the highway." They are responsive and work well with the business and our engineering leadership.
They continue to seek out additional opportunities on adjacencies and new technologies that are in a crowded space. They need to have more examples in those spaces first, before they try to sell them to us.
For example, they want to participate in our AWS implementation, but it's hard to make a shift from our existing AWS partnerships, given that we haven't seen a lot of examples of work in this area from CDW. They need to find different ways to prove that they can extend beyond their current footprint. It has not been clear how strong their bench is in that area.
We have been using CDW's engineering support for the past three years.
We have had the same footprint with CDW for a couple years and we plan to continue with that footprint. We don't plan to expand it, nor do we plan to reduce it.
They don't do technical support for us, but they respond if we have issues with their configuration.
Our company has been going through significant growth through acquisition, and the companies we have acquired have used a cornucopia of options. Name your flavor and it existed among them. We are creating a standard approach now, and that standard is CDW.
In our organization, the group that we used was Aeritae, and CDW acquired them. We just moved over to CDW as a result.
From the time we entered into an agreement to use their service, we were able to start using it almost right away. They had a pretty good stable of people and I don't remember any major delays.
There wasn't any initial setup required at our end to use CDW's service.
We have an engineering director and an engineering manager who engage with CDW. And we have an engineering team that does more of the business requirements and the translation of them for the engineering team.
We wouldn't be able to purchase services from them if they weren't within the standard expectations. We're a healthcare company and cannot pay top dollar.
My advice would be to keep it simple. The more vanilla, the better. Listen to the partnership. This type of partnership is not something that you can tell people, across the board, to use. Look at your business requirements, keep things simple, and don't over-engineer your results.
I'm not aware that CDW needed to push back or get us to think bigger as we actually have an industry-leading engineering leadership. CDW has been more of an engineering shop for us, as we have very strong technology capabilities in our organization. It has been more of a partnership versus a consulting/best practices relationship.
The CDW component is new for us in the ServiceNow space because they acquired Aeritae. We use CDW as a partner for procurement and in the accessory and device areas, but as a provider of technology, CDW is new for us. So I can't tell you as a delivery provider how good they are yet, from soup to nuts. Aeritae brought a lot of capabilities with them that didn't exist before, but they only acquired Aeritae in the last six months.
Our expectations have been met in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec. When I look at our initial expectations regarding the outcome of our work with CDW, and the solution that they ultimately delivered, they have done well. There have been no complaints from my organization on their support, and my team does not have shy taskmasters. If there had been an issue, I would've heard about it.
