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Network visibility gaps? MSPs & IT consultants share their challenges

Mike Johnson

Head of Customer Success at Netformx

What does a head of Customer Success do at Netformx? That can range from working with a customer to find an easy way to provide business metrics to their clients or helping one of our strategic representatives show a Netformx ROI to a CEO. Internally, I provide our product development…
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Network visibility gaps? MSPs & IT consultants share their challenges

Hello Cisco Partners,

It’s always informative and a great pleasure to participate in introductory meetings with our sales team where prospective customers discuss the challenges impacting their business and the tools they are lacking. How exciting for me (I normally support existing customers) renewals, training, consultancy services or hear them raise issues that I know Netformx can fix!

Recently there were quite a few of these introductory meetings with MSPs and IT consultants from nearly every continent. Interestingly, the discussions had many things in common.

Discover, understand, and leverage accurate network asset data

Whether pricing a potential deal, creating a baseline, or managing their customer’s network, multiple companies were frustrated that they didn’t know:

What’s in the network now
What the topologies and segmentations are
What’s the EOX (such as End-of-Life) status of the assets

Some customers sought to uncover as much as possible about their prospects’ networks so they can accurately position their proposals. They also needed current and accurate inventory lists (both pre- and post-sales), as well as L2 and L3 configuration information. Proper network assessments that provided the deep data collection to perform analyses, identify gaps and vulnerabilities and perform health checks were needed to ensure the network is reliable and secure.

They needed more information about the state of the network assets and insights to help them manage the networks across asset lifecycles. For example, they want regular monitoring of EOL, EOS, LDOS, and license agreement information so they can make replacement suggestions, manage Cisco SmartNet® and subscription renewals, and identify upgrade opportunities.

Streamline and automate operations while improving collaboration

Several customers we spoke with are using manual methods for asset management, which is time-consuming and lacks data accuracy. Others want to collect and report on specific customer SmartNet and software subscription information. They can download it directly from Cisco CCW/CCWR systems, but that is a time-consuming manual process and only covers Cisco products. Others need to know more about the contracts they didn’t sell.

What’s desired is a single solution that integrates Cisco and non-Cisco environments into a single dashboard that provides integrated analysis across pre-sales opportunities and post-sales contracts.

The customers also want to streamline their operations and automate processes to save time and expense so they can focus on analysis and insights that lead to outstanding service and mitigated risks.

They also expressed a desire to improve collaboration and data sharing across pre-sales, installation, and network maintenance teams.

Netformx AssetXpert addresses MSP and IT consultant challenges

Netformx AssetXpert™ has been designed to resolve just these types of industry challenges. No wonder MSP and IT solution providers are excited to find AssetXpert—a tool that fits their needs.

Are you experiencing these same challenges? Look to AssetXpert to:

Know what’s in the network. Automatically discover your customer’s actual multi-vendor network to create a baseline and gain visibility into the network so you know what’s in the network on an ongoing basis for preventative maintenance, optimization, and capacity planning.
Identify technology refresh and enhancement opportunities. Use enriched data and automated analysis to identify and manage network assets across their lifecycles, such as regular monitoring of EOL, EOS, LDOS, and license agreement information to make replacement and upgrade suggestions and to manage Cisco SmartNet and subscription renewals.
Save time and money. In-depth analysis and automated, accurate discovery that is lightweight and lightning-fast streamlines processes and provides valuable insights. A single “network source of the truth” simplifies transitions between organizations, eliminates redundant activities, and increases situational awareness.

Want to learn more about how AssetXpert can overcome your challenges?