The technology industry has seen significant consolidation in recent years, with companies seeking to grow in new areas to gain a competitive advantage. Faced with limited growth opportunities, the client looked beyond its core hardware manufacturing business to diversify its portfolio and access new markets with enterprise software.
Upon acquiring its first software company, the client immediately looked for a partner that could provide the acquired company’s customers with continued exceptional professional services and support.
Today, the client is a global supplier of a wide range of hardware and enterprise software products that serve the data center, security, networking, software, broadband, wireless, storage and industrial markets.
USD Revenue
employees
years of innovation
The Challenge
Addressing the support and professional services needs of software customers
The client knew that strong professional services and responsive technical support are critical to attracting new customers and to customer adoption, satisfaction and license renewals.
For those reasons, the client was determined to maintain a global high-value professional services team with deep expertise and an experienced technical support function.
The Objective
Continued commitment to enterprise software professional services and support
Rather than maintaining a large services team in-house, the client preferred to partner with a company that could provide the professional services team with the ongoing training and resources needed to service customers, be the best in the business and grow their careers. This partner also needed to understand the client’s culture and business objectives so it could act as an extension of its team.
Beyond software support, the chosen partner had to provide the client’s customers with the strategic thinking critical to customer adoption of the client’s enterprise software portfolio.
In addition, a strong partnership would allow the client to quickly scale and develop an acquisition pipeline that could follow the same model of services continuity.
The Solution
PSaaS – Evolving the “sell to” partner model to a “sell with” model
HCLTech presented the client with a ground-breaking idea: a Professional-Services-as-a-Service (PSaaS) partnership. Intended to go beyond providing technical and product support typically found with software partners, HCLTech proposed they bring the professional services team from the acquired company in-house. This allowed the client’s customers to continue to benefit from the expertise of the high-caliber professional services team they received in the past and enabled the client to focus on other aspects of growing its new software business.
The strategic nature of the partnership included advisory consulting services, implementation services, technical support and upgrade services, which made this different from a standard partnership agreement in the industry. HCLTech took the client’s initial request for a standard partnership deal and one-upped it with a new model that would offer additional capabilities and benefits.
Over three months, HCLTech onboarded nearly 1,000 of the client’s newly acquired professional services global team to create a separate division inside HCLTech.
HCLTech was diligent in helping employees transition from the client to HCLTech by providing the information and resources they required. HCLTech also made the necessary changes to support the client’s sales operations, which differed slightly from HCLTech’s previous contracting, pricing and sales approach.
In addition, HR and operational systems that support the PSaaS model were developed, including billing, employee rewards and retention, customer contracting and marketing.
In short, HCLTech and the client created processes for ongoing collaboration to ensure that the client’s customers received the strategic professional services excellence that they expected. This resulted in an evolution of a typical partner model that is usually “sell to” to a “sell with” model, where HCLTech and our client approached our clients’ customers together to provide a seamless, elevated experience.
The Outcome
Happy employees and strategic growth for the future
The client was so satisfied with the partnership that 18 months after onboarding the first influx of employees, HCLTech onboarded another 800 employees from the client’s next software company acquisition. This move expanded the professional services team and enhanced the services available to the client’s customers even further.
Demonstrating the client’s growing trust in HCLTech, the partnership expanded to include product support withHCLTech as a value-added reseller of the client’s enterprise software portfolio.
With this partnership, HCLTech, known for its culture of ideapreneurship, has once again shown how it turns ideas into reality that deliver success for our clients—and their customers.
The impact for HCLTech and our client included:
- Received Partner of the Year award for 2022 from the client
- The client’s customers now have access to HCLTech’s global team of 225,000+ Ideapreneurs ready to help them scale as needed
- HCLTech’s global network of R&D teams, innovation labs and delivery centers in 60 countries provides the client with the resources to continue advancing their growth strategy
- Client now has an existing solution to the challenge of maintaining professional services after future software company acquisitions
