Innovation that Drives Efficiency

Essintial Enterprise Solutions
Written by Jessica Ferlaino

Essintial Enterprise Solutions was born in 2010 out of the acquisition of two established organizations that were integrated to fully take advantage of each entity’s extensive enterprise technology support experience and expertise.
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To understand what drives Essintial Enterprise Solutions, one need not look further than its name. What seems to be a spelling mistake is really the fusion of the word ‘essential’ with the ‘I’ qualities that are deemed necessary to the company: individuals, innovation, infrastructure, intelligence, implementation, identity, integration, installation, integrity and insight.

Essintial Enterprise Solutions has established a reputation for exceptional implementation of scalable, cost-effective service for data centers, networking support and back office technologies. Commercial and government clients benefit from the firm’s networks, processes, resources and infrastructure.

In 2012, CEO Tom York took the helm, bringing with him thirty-one years of experience with IBM, as well as industry insight as the president of the Service Industry Association. Fuelled by his philosophy of acting before the market makes it necessary, Essintial has carved out a firmly established place for itself.

Essintial Enterprise Solutions increased its presence as a leader and fully taken advantage of all opportunities. York noted that the company’s growth has been due to a combination of its proprietary services and commitment to investing in supportive infrastructure and resources.

“The real catalyst of Essintial is what we have trademarked as our Managed Workforce™ methodology,” York stated. The company has a blended workforce full-time employees and freelancers providing its field services. “We back that with the proper infrastructure, which is what is really key. Layered over top of that is a strong business intelligence function.”

Essintial Enterprise Solutions has been categorized as a Disrupter in the provider segmentation category for third-party data center and network maintenance by the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company Gartner in its recently published Competitive Landscape report.1 “What we believe that meant, as a disruptor, we were employing new leading edge approaches to the delivery of services and a lot of that was around things that we’ve done with Managed Workforce™.”

Essintial is exploiting Managed Workforce™ in project solutions and a consultative approach to managed services, which enables cost-effective scalability. “We’re really excited about that right now. It’s a big need in the marketplace because anybody with field workforces has those challenges: cost and scalability,” York noted.

Instead of looking at service calls as separate events, the company supports enterprise technology with a service lifecycle management approach. It can meet all client requirements with its solutions: onsite and offsite, main or remote locations, same- or next-day service, short- or long-term projects, deployments, upgrades, complete and partial outsourcing.

The company helps its clients to optimize resources, costs and performance through its network of national field technicians and the abilities of its business intelligence team, paired with its logistics network of over 150 forward stocking locations for readily accessible components.

Clients in over 30,000 locations rely on Essintial Enterprise Solutions to deliver industry-leading, customized solutions through its cutting-edge technology, certification standards and proprietary processes. Managed Workforce™ delivers a comprehensive network of experienced and reliable field technical resources to meet a client’s contracted requirements.

Whether a client needs enterprise technology deployment, upgrades, maintenance, moves, replacements, removals or end of life services, the company’s proprietary Resource Balancing Tool (RBT) matches customer requirements to technician capabilities, resource availability, cost objectives and performance requirements.

Essintial goes a great distance in vetting its people to ensure they meet its platinum-level standards. These resources are managed through Essential’s’ Preferred Partner Network (PPN). Technicians are subject to background and drug screening procedures and evaluated for professional, technical and interpersonal skills.

“We have a very strategic relationship with another company, Field Nation, and they have developed, I think, some world-class tools from the standpoint of being able to recruit, really crowdsourcing of this whole freelancer pool,” York said. There has been significant system integration between the two entities.

Resources are scheduled with Workforce Management™ software to satisfy all client objectives. No other independent service organization has the reach of Essintial’s vast network, infrastructure, technology services and on- and off-site support. These elements are key to its success and subject of much effort and investment.

Essintial’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) and Business Intelligence function offer insight, analysis and metrics to support and optimize continuously available service. TAC delivers the people, inventory and knowledge to implement and maintain data center servers, storage and network equipment.

“Our fastest growing line of business is around project solutions,” said York, “The ability to install, upgrade and maintain distributed technology regardless of where it is at in the U.S. That’s certainly a differentiator for us.”

“Through the variable technical workforce model with Managed Workforce™, we can scale up and down very quickly, so the project solution line of business is by far the fastest growing line of business for us. We have doubled our revenue each of the last two years.” This year is set to outperform previous years.

“We can support as well as provide the project-based services for automated teller machines, and we have a very exciting new offering that we just rolled out this year. It’s really built around a consultative service where we can help companies with their service supply chain,” York said.

“The tide is starting to turn where end-users and OEMs understand, that if they don’t start to embrace this world of being able to leverage the freelancer technical workforce, that they are going to be left behind,” York said. “The biggest value is that we can assist our clients either direct, or the manufacturers, by being able to quickly scale to reach these geographic expanses.”

A great example of Essintial Enterprise Solutions’ capacity was its successful execution of a contract for one of the U.S.’ largest retailers in which a security upgrade was required for all of the PIN pads in the point-of-sale environment. Needing to upgrade to the newest technology and firmware, it looked no further than Essintial.

This project entailed a significant upgrade to meet a tight timeline and included stores in urban and rural areas across the country. This required Essintial to scale its resources to be able to complete thirty to forty stores daily. It sent in technicians overnight to avoid disruptions to operations.

“We completed that project in the seventy-day window required,” York proudly said. “We upgraded 2,440 stores in seventy days, and it required over 5,000 scheduled technician touches, and we accomplished that with relatively no problems. That was a tremendous value to our client – the ability to get that done across that broad of a geographic expanse, that fast.”

“When we need to scale that big, we’re very confident through the groundwork that we’ve laid, that we can send the right resources and even in that magnitude meet all requirements. It’s really the lifeblood of our business model,” York stated.

No technology project is too big or small for Essintial Enterprise Solutions. The company is able to satisfy broad requirements anywhere, even with tight timelines and budgets. It gives clients seamless direct and back-up help desk services for ad hoc and long term support. As a result of its flexibility, it responds to over 40,000 service requests each month.

“There is just a tremendous amount of technical talent that has become available through this freelance phenomenon, and it just continues to grow,” York noted. “Within two years, well over half of the U.S. workforce is projected to be in a freelance type scenario, so the pool is very deep.” The trend shows great promise for Essintial as it is positioned to take advantage of this.

“Essintial is one of the largest users of freelance IT technical labor, so number one, we’re well known in the community because we do utilize a lot of them. Secondly, we spend a lot of time making sure that we do all the right things, working with these folks to really demonstrate that we care about them as individuals. We treat those folks the same way that we would treat a [full-time] employee.”

The company invests in the training necessary to support the contracts technicians are deployed to undertake. It collects feedback to ensure it maintains a high satisfaction rating with employees as well as clients.

York foresees a great deal of continued potential in distribution and retail as well as in financial services due to the changing security requirements, such as EMV and other technology upgrades. EMV (from Europay, MasterCard and Visa) is the standard for smart cards and the machines that accept them.

“A lot of it is centered around automated teller machines, and Point of Sale within large retailers. They have a footprint and a presence everywhere in the U.S., and it’s the ability to be able to scale and run those projects in the expanse of their footprint. We can get to all those locations and deliver with quality and consistency.”

As the market changes, technology and expertise are necessary for adaptation. As many service organizations use outdated technology and inefficient processes, Essintial brings innovative solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of its clients.

“We are spending a lot of time with that to make sure that we stay totally leading edge with the tools that we need to provide our folks to be able to work with urgency and also be able to scale the infrastructure, tools, process and technology,” York concluded.

Essintial Enterprise Solutions identifies ways to work smarter by investing in its people, processes, technology and infrastructure. By fully using its potential, it stays ahead of the market and leads the industry.

Attribution:
1 Gartner, Competitive Landscape: Leveraging Third-Party Maintenance Providers for Data Center and Network Maintenance Cost Optimization, North America, Christine Tenneson, 17 March 2016

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