At FTDATA quality management is a team based approach.
Through a combination of highly qualified on-site support resources and our behind-the-scenes management, FTDATA delivers the quality management support needed to ensure a successful outcome every time. FTDATA provides dedicated employees that identify, create and deliver value through best practices and the application of technology to deliver solutions. Quality management begins prior to contract award. FTDATA conducts engineering assessments of every proposed solution to ensure that they are technically viable and fully compliant with requirements as articulated in the solicitations. FTDATA culture fosters a collegial environment where discussions of emerging technologies and design options occur with regularity and as a matter of course among our engineers.
Our Quality Management and Assurance approach is an amalgam of quality principles honed from prior experience with Malcom Baldridge and Capability Maturity Model assessments. Customer Care is the foundation of our approach. Our Custom Care Services offering is designed to provide support that is committed to a value-based model. A value-based model, led by an account management team, delivers the structural, organizational, and procedural resources that enable the customer to realize a strategic, competitive advantage by partnering with FTDATA. Custom Care Services includes the on-going performance audits, accurate knowledge management tools and strategies, and outstanding technical resources. The combination of these activities provides customers with improved service levels, customer satisfaction, increased productivity and cost reduction.
FTDATA takes a proactive, layered approach toward ensuring customer satisfaction:
* Account Management Our robust and attentive, account management team addresses the first and most important level of customer satisfaction. These individuals ensure that all operational objectives, stakeholders and end users are satisfied with the overall level of service provided by FTDATA. One of our tag lines aptly reflects our value: We deliver Fortune 50 expertise with the personal touch of a small business. As a small business we can ensure that our Executives are directly accessible to our customers.
* Operational Customer Satisfaction Reporting: FTDATA conducts detailed customer satisfaction assessments and provides reporting on a regular basis. This ensures that day-to-day satisfaction levels, as well as those for special projects (e.g., migrations), are addressed at time of action. This feedback is provided to the Account Management team, for review and analysis, and immediate incorporation into project practices.
* Engagement/Operational Audits (EOA): Periodically, FTDATA performs operational audits of all accounts. These audits differ from the "process reviews" by virtue of their focus. Process reviews determine the engineering compliance to the process, EOAs focus on the entire business relationship - from operational environment and stakeholder objectives to workflows and responsibilities. The intent of these audits is to continually improve the overall operational capacity of FTDATA within the entire engagement.
All of these layers provide FTDATA with a detailed strategy toward attaining higher levels of customer satisfaction. FTDATA believes that customer satisfaction is the primary objective of all relationships and that this layered approach enables us to address customer satisfaction across the entire spectrum of each relationship.
Beyond these outward, customer-facing quality practices, our FTDATA approach ensures that quality management artifacts are produced throughout the project life-cycle:
* Requirements Review: Requirements documents receive review and customer approval prior to progressing to the next phase
* Requirements Compliance: Is ensured with requirements compliance matrices that may be provided as part of a solicitation response but will then be revised to ensure that they reflect the final design
* Design Review: Design artifacts receive final review and customer approval prior to moving to purchasing and implementation.
* Integration and Test Lab: Our Integration and Test laboratory provides a highly effective environment for demonstrating infrastructure design prototypes to the customer before finalizing the ultimate solution. Our Integration and Test laboratory enables preconfiguration and burn in activities to occur prior to delivery to the customer site, minimizing on-site customer disruptions. This can be very advantageous where the customer site is under construction, allowing equipment to remain safely off-site while continuing forward progress on the project.
* Test Plan and Execution: Test planning and execution both in our lab and on customer site prior to production cutover. FTDATA understands that hardware solutions need to be fully tested before they are introduced into a production environment. Through hands-on training and interoperability testing in our Integration Lab, we make sure our design solution and the products work for us before we deploy them for you.
* Documentation Approval: Our methodology recognizes the value and importance of documentation to IT infrastructure projects. Our approach ensures that documentation is given appropriate attention and receives customer review and approval prior to project completion.
Post project reviews are conducted with regularity to provide process improvement opportunities.
A cornerstone to our Quality Management approach is our technology partnerships and reseller relationships. FTDATA's strong industry partnerships lead to superior service and tangible results for our clients. We choose our partners according to the quality of their products and services, and their ability to meet our clients' business needs. We then invest significant time in training and certifying our engineers and sales staff on the vendor's products. Our relationships also provide us the ability to get answers quickly to solve problems and overcome obstacles that are in the path of our clients solutions. In every relationship we maintain, we insist that it include expedited access to the right resources within the supplier company to get the answers our clients need. Our repeat business and customer relationships that evolve into long-standing loyal partnerships is clear evidence that technical excellence, tangible results is not simply a tag line but a way of life at FTDATA.
FTDATA delivers the quality management support needed to ensure a successful outcome every time.