Welch Replaces Indian Outsourcer With Local VAR

Find someone that speaks your business language.

That's the lesson Welch's Foods learned when it switched management of its help desk from an Indian outsourcer to Waltham, Mass.-based NWN. NWN's success at Welch's, a producer of jellies, jams and juices, shows how local solution providers can trump off shore outsourcers with a more astute understanding of customers' business needs and the ability to muster local resources to quickly solve a problem.

Larry Rencken, former information services vice president at Welch's Foods, who recently left the company, said Welch's was migrating from its legacy environment to Oracle's e-business suite. Welch's, with about 1,200 employees and annual revenues of about $700 million decided that instead of adding headcount and infrastructure to support the transition, it would seek strategic outsourcing partners. Among the services being outsourced was help desk.

"We started out with our CA help desk products and tried to integrate them with the Indian outsourcing firm and adopt their SLAs," said Rencken. "The problem is that their model was really designed for larger firms and we weren't quite large enough in headcount in our IT staff to manage their best practices operating model the way it was designed. We needed a partner that could be more flexible in order to set up an operating model that was not going to be a significant pain point as we learned to work together."

In stepped NWN, with 2007 annual revenues of about $160 million and the third fastest growing VAR in the country according to CRN's 2007 Fast Growth list. "One of the things about help desk is knowing a lot about the people and a lot about the company's circumstances," said Drew Phelps, NWN's command center director. "We speak the same language [as Welch's]; we understand their day-to-day business."

NWN's success at Welch's illustrates how local solution providers with managed services and outsourcing skills can buck the trend toward Indian outsourcing. What NWN brought to the table was a solution provider that specializes in midsized businesses and a willingness to tailor a help desk environment to match the customer's needs.

"We talked with them extensively about how they manage their internal processes and they were quite successful," said Drew Phelps. "Then we talked about how we do things and we were pretty close to being in line. There were some places where we weren't in agreement, but we negotiated and moved forward."

Welch's decision to go with NWN instead of the Indian outsourcing left only about five weeks to get the help desk up and running prior to implementation of the Oracle ERP upgrade.

"They were in a real pinch and we were able to react quickly and get their people and our people on the same page from an expectation standpoint," said NWN CEO Mont Phelps. "That was key to the deal."

Added Rencken, "From day one, NWN aligned with our vision. They made commitments to what they were going to do and when they were going to do them."

NWN advised Welch's to opt for a phased roll out of help desk services in order to ensure that the system worked up to expectations. "Early on we knew there were things that we could not roll out by their deadline," said Drew Phelps.

Instead he suggested that Welch implement full help desk support over a three-month period rather than rushing to meet the tight deadline. "That was a very realistic way to roll it out and maintain a high level of service," he said. "Some people need to switch on a light, but you need to phase something like this in slowly so people can get used to the processes and the technology."

NWN currently provides level one and level two help desk support for all endusers on all applications ranging from shrink-wrap software, proprietary applications and Oracle's ERP system. "Our support is totally customized to what Welch endusers have on the desktop and what they use on a daily basis," Drew Phelps said.

NWN provides 24/7 support through a combination of dedicated Welch's support staff during peak business hours coupled with overflow support to NWN's command center support team, with off hours handled by the command center.

While help desk was the first outsourcing contract for NWN at Welch, the success of the initial business should lead to follow on services contracts.

"We'll likely add a little more scope [to the help desk support]," Rencken said. "We'll probably hand some network monitoring and back end support over to them."

Tweet

   

More Channel Programs