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Attention to detail
Teradata Customer Services functions as your pit crew so you can concentrate on driving your business.
by Mary Pat Simmons and Tom Stierle
When working on projects in a fast-paced business environment, many people tend to ignore the fine details or brush them off as unimportant. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is the message often given—and readily accepted.
Instead, the focus is usually on the big picture. While a project’s final outcome is obviously important, people often disregard that its success is determined by how well the details are managed.
The same is true for data warehousing. If the finer points are ignored, the system’s availability can be inhibited and its return on investment (ROI) can deteriorate.
To help Teradata clients manage the challenging and intricate details of their data warehouse system and processes, as well as enable continuous availability, Teradata Customer Services provides them with the proven ingredients of people, processes and tools. The team uses these elements to offer a comprehensive service management approach to minimize risk so that the customers’ strategic and tactical availability requirements are met.
Clients can select from a portfolio of 29 different service offers. For instance, Teradata Customer Services can support your organization’s entire solution; it can mentor and train database administrators to manage the company’s system; or it can assist in areas considered too complicated or time-consuming to be managed by your staff. By trusting the team to keep the system highly available, you can concentrate on your core business.
Teradata Customer Services offers best-in-class data warehouse service with the strength of its four cornerstones—the calculated strategy of its Availability Management Services (AMS) portfolio, a tangible measurement of its performance, the expertise of its people and the strength of its technical architecture. (See figure.)
Portfolio
Keeping in line with your business niche, the team must understand your goals and anticipate where you are headed before recommending the type of customer care that is right for your organization. It then implements the strategy using the AMS portfolio and best practices while working closely with you to help care for your system.
The goal of the AMS approach is to minimize your system’s risk and maximize its availability. The process begins by conducting a collaborative consultation with you about your system’s care, best practices and availability requirements. Taking a comprehensive approach in evaluating your needs ensures the Teradata platform is stable, secure and able to deliver optimal availability performance.
To identify areas of risk to be mitigated, you and the team will review seven key attributes—environment, infrastructure, technology, support level, operations, data protection and recoverability—using two specific AMS approaches:
- Teradata Availability Risk Estimator is a short spreadsheet tool with a list of questions that provides a quick overview of your risk profile and what-if scenarios for improvements. This service can be completed in less than an hour, on-site or remotely.
- Teradata Availability Risk Assessment is an in-depth analysis of your Teradata environment. A systematic approach is used that is measured against Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) industry standards and benchmarked against 600 best practices for keeping systems up and running.
Upon completion of the procedure, which typically takes four to six weeks, the team evaluates scorecards and summary benchmark scores from the seven sections of the assessment and provides gap-analysis reports. Based on this information, you will receive detailed recommendations for improving operational practices in each category or attribute. These represent the tangible real-world IT assets, tools, people and processes that can be budgeted, selected, administered and supervised to support availability and manage the impacts of risk events.
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The benefits of delving into this level of detail include opportunities to set standards for the system and processes, as well as determine your organization’s data warehousing goals and how Teradata Customer Services can help you reach them. The analyses will identify how to:
- Improve system productivity and quality of support
- Meet strategic and tactical availability needs
- Recognize all sources of availability risk and the impacts they might have on your system
- Apply a simple, holistic approach to risk mitigation
- Facilitate communication between operations and management
- Conduct benchmarks based on best-practice assessments
- Establish a clear improvement roadmap to meet evolving needs
Service management
To monitor, maintain and continuously improve its standards, Teradata Customer Services established metrics of its infrastructure and processes. A monthly status report is sent to you with the scores of each metric. This quantifies and evaluates the team’s performance to ensure quality support for your business-critical operations. Standardized tools and an effective service design are in place to provide professional assistance and streamline delivery processes.
The services you’ve received are assessed on two levels: corporate and local. At the corporate level, the amount of assistance and support is measured based on what was promised and delivered.
At the local level, when your organization experiences problematic situations or unusual trends, Teradata Customer Services is electronically notified. Its members troubleshoot the situation, determine the cause and correct the error as quickly as possible. An incident backlog, which tracks the percentage of these calls, is used to monitor and prioritize incoming and ongoing incidents, especially noting the speed of resolution.
As technology and customer needs evolve, the service management approach is continuously updated. Consequently, you’ll get faster time to resolution, globally consistent service delivery, effective collaboration of support expertise, and world-class support certified under the Service Capability and Performance Certification standards.
People
Associates with an average of 15 years of experience in customer services bring knowledge in support of the data warehouse that drives your business. The extensive ongoing product training and certifications they receive enable them to provide expert, fast and high-quality service through methods such as:
- Responding to a service request made via telephone or online at Teradata @ Your Service
- Resolving a situation on-site or remotely through a portal
- Scheduling customer service reviews
- Participating in impromptu meetings
- Planning upgrades and change management timelines
With this type of service and communication, you will be ensured higher availability of your system, data and applications.
Architecture
In the data warehouse, a tremendous amount of information and detailed data must be moved, managed and maintained. The assistance administered for these tasks, which typically include asset gathering, system validation, event management and secure remote connectivity, can save you both time and cost.
Because Teradata Customer Services implements the same architecture used by the clients it serves, it understands the benefits and requirements of running the system and maintaining high availability. Employing a tested and best-in-class architecture delivers value that:
Details matter. If left ignored and unattended, they can become problematic and stand in the way of your organization’s progress.
- Analyzes and resolves problems faster
- Provides better problem assessment and troubleshooting resources
- Reduces change outage times and chances of human errors
- Captures and displays customer configuration details
- Monitors close to 1,000 fault thresholds
- Expedites the ability to send patches to and from customer sites
The technology provided by a data warehouse from Teradata and the system performance services and operational mentoring from Teradata Customer Services will ensure that your data warehouse is performing at its optimal level. As such, empowerment with actionable information and business insight will lead your company to success.
The difference is in the details
Details matter. If left ignored and unattended, they can become problematic and stand in the way of your organization’s progress.
Instead, leave the details to Teradata Customer Services. Its four cornerstones—portfolio, service management, people and architecture—will provide you with the utmost attention and support of the finer points required to run your data warehouse. With this type of service, you can confidently run your business knowing the “small stuff” is taken care of.
Mary Pat Simmons is a Teradata Certified Professional and currently manages Teradata Customer Services marketing programs.
Tom Stierle is vice president of Teradata Customer Services Global Operations and has more than 23 years’ experience in the technology field.
Photography by iStockphoto