How Configuration Services Can Help Solve Business Problems

The challenges of rolling out new technology have, perhaps, never been greater than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only was it nearly impossible to find certain types of devices and other hardware at times, but organizations also needed to get this equipment out to their remote employees to facilitate their new work-from-home models. 

While the days of crippling supply chain issues and urgent overnight rollouts are mostly behind us, technology deployment continues to be a challenge for many organizations. More and more, these customers are turning to CDW and our partners for assistance with tasks such as imaging, asset tagging, data collection, testing and shipping to end users. 

Here are three major challenges that we’re helping organizations tackle through our configuration services offerings. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked with a national restaurant chain to deploy the technology needed to facilitate curbside ordering and pickup. The company needed to get its new offering to market as quickly as possible, but business and IT leaders first wanted to be sure that everything would work seamlessly as soon as the equipment was set up. We helped by creating a “store in a box” solution for the chain — configuring the infrastructure and devices needed to support the new line of business, testing it all on our end and then shipping it to individual locations with setup documentation. The result was a plug-and-play solution that helped the company rapidly adapt to a changing business landscape. 

Recently, we worked with a major online retailer that experienced extremely fast growth during parts of the COVID-19 pandemic — at some points, adding 100 or more new employees per week. Internal IT staffers lacked the bandwidth necessary to get devices out to so many new employees, and so the company turned to CDW for configuration services. We configured devices according to each employee’s user persona, packaged the equipment in a welcome box from the employer and shipped everything directly to end users’ homes, allowing the new hires to get up and running in their new roles as quickly as possible. With lingering supply chain issues continuing to create uncertainty about IT assets, we offer buy-and-hold services for our customers, taking delivery of devices and infrastructure and then storing the equipment in our warehouses until an organization needs it. This helps IT and business leaders plan ahead and avoid the supply chain issues that have plagued companies in recent years.

One of our large healthcare customers asked us to help design a new medical cart setup with PCs, monitors, mice and peripheral devices. Clinical and technology leaders at the organization knew what they wanted the carts to be able to do, but they weren’t sure how to integrate all the disparate IT and healthcare tools in a way that would offer the functionality they were looking for. We built out the solution, tested the medical carts in our facilities and shipped the equipment directly to the organization’s hospitals. We were even able to provision the carts to automatically connect to the organization’s wireless network as soon as they were powered up. This was an organization that had experienced “dead on arrival” issues with previous equipment deployments. But by leveraging configuration services, users were able to start utilizing their technology as soon as they received it.

Story by Scott Erickson, who has been with CDW for 19 years and is a Sr. Manager for Configuration Services in the Chicagoland area.