Author: Miranda Ruane
vCom provides four products to our customers, to help them manage their IT environment:
- Planning & Procurement
- Operations Management
- Expense Management
- QuantumShift, vCom’s Buyers’ Club
Each solution has a purpose within the vCom customer journey to full management of their IT ecosystem. Yet the QuantumShift solution provides a unique combination of benefits: Aggregation, Consolidation, Normalization, and Integration. For those of us who live and breathe vManager, we might not even realize the power of QuantumShift’s integration with our platform. When you understand it, it’s no surprise that our top customers consider QuantumShift + vManager the “nirvana” of IT Lifecycle Management! Here are some of the most impactful QuantumShift Integrations and how they compare across the multiple lifecycle solutions.
Planning and Procurement
vManager’s integration with QuantumShift starts at the beginning of the Lifecycle with Marketplace. When a customer or vCom account team member submits a request for commodity services through Marketplace, pricing will automatically pull from multiple vendors within moments. This includes services like POTS that are not available via any other platform on the market. The pricing retrieved for any commodity is based on QuantumShift’s pre-negotiated contracts and ready for immediate approval within the platform. Multiple quotes from disparate carriers or technologies can be consolidated into a single request, or on a single Service Order. Service Orders which follow customer specific SO Workflows and approval rules established by the customer, can be approved right within the platform, and trigger the creation of orders immediately. Each signed Service Order is automatically stored in vManager’s Document Library, with no manual intervention.
In contrast, in order to process non-QuantumShift pricing provided through Marketplace, each chosen vendor, whether it’s a carrier or an aggregator, must provide a separate agreement for approval outside the system. That additional step may take anywhere from hours to days, thereby potentially causing delays for customers. Once signed, each provider’s contract must be manually uploaded to the Document Library by the account team.
Operations Management
The greater the level of visibility, the better equipped our customers are for making good decisions. Integration at the Asset level lays the foundation for these discussions. QuantumShift Assets are dynamically updated thanks to integration with the underlying vendor provided during the order process. We are so maniacal about the accuracy of the technical information for QuantumShift assets, we have examples of correcting the carriers’ own erroneous records to expedite resolving an outage. Monthly charges are a single click away, and are broken down to a granular level, thanks to integration from Invoice to Asset including surcharges, fees, etc. The associated contract (Service Order) is also a single click away.
In contrast, for non-QS Assets, technical information can be limited to what we can get from the provider, while contract and charge information is completely missing.
Expense Management
The full power of QuantumShift’s consolidation is on full display in the Invoice module of vManager. QuantumShift transforms the invoice into a multi-dimensional report. Want to see charges by carrier? DONE. Want to see them by Service? DONE. Want to see them by Location? DONE. Drilling into a charge provides even more data: Reference Number, Account Name, and Inventory Name all attached to the related cost.
It’s so granular and so slick—it’s vastly better than what customers get from any Retail invoice (which are still light years better than what they get without vManager).
Managing IT Spend using vManager is a MUST for any organization looking to effectively manage its resources and compete in today’s market. Leveraging vManager to manage Retail spend is better than maintaining the status quo; leveraging vManager, coupled with our managed services, to manage IT services sourced through vCom’s brokerage offering is even better. The integration with QuantumShift offers the best outcome, across all nine modules. Understanding the difference in customer experience depending on the Lifecycle Solution is key to ensuring a successful partnership.
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