In terms of services delivered on time, anytime that something has not been on time it's because we're holding it up on our end. It's not because of them. Sometimes we can't keep up with the tasks. We have four people on staff who are actively using the CDW services. They are me as the director of educational innovation, my associate director of tech services, our help desk administrator, and our network sysadmin. It's also important that we still have ownership in the day-to-day management of our communications systems. They're supporting us, overseeing things, and not the other way around. The balance they've struck on this is great. I don't feel they're ever going to do anything to a system that I don't know about. But at the same time, if they need to intervene, I know they can and will do so in a way that's appropriate.
My advice is that you should expect that you're still going to need to be involved in interfacing, but that's a general comment that applies to all external providers. You can't expect that you're just going to be able to outsource a phone system and not have anybody internally who understands the business requirements. You need someone who is able to relay that kind of information to the service provider. They manage a lot of different companies and they're not going to understand what the requirements of your particular business are. You always lose some efficiency when you have to go to an external partner. You have to interface with them because they don't necessarily understand your business. That efficiency loss would probably be there with any partner. We don't have the internal employee base to support our system in the same way, so CDW's service has made us more efficient because we would have had to go to an outside partner no matter what, to support the large system we have. It gives us agility and ease in managing changes in our system. The fact that Managed Collaboration is a partner that can manage a hybrid environment with multiple vendor platforms is not something we need to leverage right now. That could change though. We would like to look at using Microsoft Teams for unified communications and would leverage them for that, down the road.
I would price compare based on your project. Have an interview with every company. This is the same advice that I give anybody. No matter who you are going with for services, you should make sure that you interview them, ask a lot of questions, and see if they meet your needs specifically. I don't really want to do phone setup nor management. Although, they have delegated that to us. Recently, I would give them an eight out of 10.
Before you completely commit, make sure that your internal network structure will support the specific phone equipment that CDW would be providing you with. We ran into a problem where our specific firewalls had some incompatibility issues. Other than that, I have no other issues that somebody should watch out for.
Learn what your peers think about CDW Managed Collaboration Services. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
CDW Managed Collaboration Services provides overall IT support for a vast amount of systems. This managed service provider helps to manage corporate infrastructure. CDW Managed Collaboration Services specializes in remote systems management and phone systems. Users can receive this service from anywhere and not only in their office space. This service can be used for network overhaul, phone system management, printer projects, SIP-based phone systems, and much more. This management service...
In terms of services delivered on time, anytime that something has not been on time it's because we're holding it up on our end. It's not because of them. Sometimes we can't keep up with the tasks. We have four people on staff who are actively using the CDW services. They are me as the director of educational innovation, my associate director of tech services, our help desk administrator, and our network sysadmin. It's also important that we still have ownership in the day-to-day management of our communications systems. They're supporting us, overseeing things, and not the other way around. The balance they've struck on this is great. I don't feel they're ever going to do anything to a system that I don't know about. But at the same time, if they need to intervene, I know they can and will do so in a way that's appropriate.
It meets our needs. I would rate them as 9 out of 10.
My advice is that you should expect that you're still going to need to be involved in interfacing, but that's a general comment that applies to all external providers. You can't expect that you're just going to be able to outsource a phone system and not have anybody internally who understands the business requirements. You need someone who is able to relay that kind of information to the service provider. They manage a lot of different companies and they're not going to understand what the requirements of your particular business are. You always lose some efficiency when you have to go to an external partner. You have to interface with them because they don't necessarily understand your business. That efficiency loss would probably be there with any partner. We don't have the internal employee base to support our system in the same way, so CDW's service has made us more efficient because we would have had to go to an outside partner no matter what, to support the large system we have. It gives us agility and ease in managing changes in our system. The fact that Managed Collaboration is a partner that can manage a hybrid environment with multiple vendor platforms is not something we need to leverage right now. That could change though. We would like to look at using Microsoft Teams for unified communications and would leverage them for that, down the road.
I would price compare based on your project. Have an interview with every company. This is the same advice that I give anybody. No matter who you are going with for services, you should make sure that you interview them, ask a lot of questions, and see if they meet your needs specifically. I don't really want to do phone setup nor management. Although, they have delegated that to us. Recently, I would give them an eight out of 10.
Before you completely commit, make sure that your internal network structure will support the specific phone equipment that CDW would be providing you with. We ran into a problem where our specific firewalls had some incompatibility issues. Other than that, I have no other issues that somebody should watch out for.