Case Study 1:
Document Production Support

Client is a law firm with approximately 500 users. Staff frequently prints legal documents and charges their clients on a per page basis. Upon learning the dynamics of their business, we determined that the printing of legal documents is a significant revenue stream for the client’s business.

Prior to doing business with CRA, the client would call the manufacturer directly to have their printers serviced. They were having difficulties getting a technician on-site after calling for service. This resulted in down time for the faulty printer, which in turn, led to revenue losses since the total document output decreased. Print jobs had to be re-routed to other printers, which slowed down their entire document production process.

When the client discovered that our technicians were certified to work on their printers, they decided to give us the opportunity to show if we could service their needs better than the manufacturer. Needless to say, we have been there ever since. Our response time has exceeded their expectations. We have demonstrated our technical expertise by fixing numerous problems in a timely manner. We have even solved problems that were created by the manufacturers’ technicians through misdiagnosis of problems on several problem printers.

Through our maintenance program, we have also minimized aggregate down time for their printers as a whole. We have increased service coverage to include the client’s satellite offices on the East Coast. We were recently told by our contact that we started out with them as a printer service provider but have evolved into an integral part of their business as a Document Production Support partner.

Case Study 2:
Help Desk

Client is an international bank with multiple offices worldwide. There are two locations within our region; one in Manhattan and one in Jersey City, NJ with a total of 1,500 employees.

At each location there is an onsite Help Desk to provide support and maintenance to all the IT equipment the client has (PC’s, Printers, Monitors and other peripherals). Not only is the equipment expensive but it may also contain sensitive company data that is integral to their needs.

The Help Desk receives multiple tickets each day to resolve problems encountered by users such as network connectivity, software troubles, and hardware malfunctions. It is the Help Desk’s responsibility to fix the errors quickly and properly. The client chose to bring in Consultant Group A to aid Help Desk in this area. At that time Consultant Group A closed on average about 70% of tickets received, meaning there were still 30% of tickets that were not taken care of. Within that 70% group users were forced to step aside while Consultant Group A worked on the tickets resulting in downtime. The 30% of tickets that were unresolved by Consultant Group A was passed on to the internal staff. By doing so this cut into the time of the internal staff causing them to miss their own deadlines.

There were many reasons as to why such a low number of tickets were closed. One was the lack of technical skills Consultant Group A possessed. Next, Consultant Group A did not provide backup consultants to those who were out certain days resulting in overlapping tickets. Last, Consultant Group A preferred to work during regular hours to resolve tickets leading to downtime to bank employees.

When CRA was brought in to handle the same types of tickets the closing average jumped to well over 90%. Not only was CRA able to take care of these tickets, it minimized downtime tremendously.

This was all achieved due to CRA’s dedication and commitment to providing the best support for its clients. CRA makes sure that each of its consultants are trained and technically sound. Before each job, consultants go through training by spending time at the client site to familiarize themselves with the daily operations. This allows CRA’s consultants to operate as though they’ve been employed at the client as long as the regular staff has been. If the client asks for two consultants to be staffed at their site, CRA brings in four during the training session in order to provide backup in case of emergency. In order to prevent downtime CRA consultants work around the users’ schedule, even if it means staying after hours to close the tickets.

Case Study 3:
Network Management

Client is an international bank with 1,000 employees at their New York branch. Their system was outdated, using Cat-2, resulting in slow and unreliable connections. The client wanted to update network infrastructure to improve current situation

Our job was to provide a way to improve network communication. As a result we provided client with two groups of consultants to work with in-house staff; one for backend support to activate proper ports for communication and one group for user end support, to physically change the cables from CAT-2 to CAT-5 and install appropriate drivers for new network cards. In the financial industry time lost can result in tremendous monetary losses and CRA understands that. In order to prevent such an incident, CRA consultants stayed after hours and came in on weekends to finish this project.

When such an upgrade is made monitoring the performance is important. CRA consultants, along with the in house staff, monitored the new network and also corrected problems by making necessary adjustments to settings.

As a result the whole bank was wired with up to date technology resulting in faster connections.

Case Study 4:
Infrastructure

Client is a leading global provider of integrated real-time information and transaction services to the capital markets. With their premier benchmark fixed-income content, IP based distribution platform and transaction systems, client provides financial services firms with cost-effective, flexible methods for using content to drive investment decisions and order flow across new and existing electronic channels.

CRA was brought in on the ground level to assist in the design and implementation of client’s platform. Our technicians worked with client’s project manager to develop a back-end platform that would provide market data services to client’s existing customers. The platform also needed to be scalable to provide services for a growing client base and new individual subscribers.