In early 2020, the CXT180 team was asked by the CISO at a Luxury Retailer, to host an executive meeting with the CISO, CIO and 14 EVPs from different business units within the company. The CIO shared the objective to move 80-90% of current IT services to the cloud. This transformation within this Luxury Retailer’s environment initially started with a cloud-architected data center. The goal of this executive meeting was to present and discuss a cloud based strategy, encompassing and including all of the different business units. Following this meeting CXT180 was engaged by this Luxury Retailer to partner on (3) projects including the transformation to SD-WAN + Management, Wireless and Wireline TEM (telecom expense management) and possible UCaaS solution.

We led a series of Discovery Workshops, meeting with our executive team, product specialists, senior engineers and the Luxury Retailer’s IT team to understand their requirements, applications, current infrastructure and security needs for the project. Because we are carrier-neutral and work with more than 150 industry-leading providers, we were able to make an unbiased recommendation to review a Managed SD-WAN solution with a primary and secondary Internet circuit with true redundancy and fail over. To gather a true sampling of the marketplace, the Luxury Retailer chose to go out for RFP. CXT180 worked with the procurement team and wrote a product-specific RFP, including a detailed SOW and pricing requirements. CXT180 added value by saving the IT team hours they would have spent vetting the solution, researching, and meeting with the different providers. Because of our experience in the industry, we made recommendations, sourced, and included the providers that best fit the SOW and the client’s requirements. Along with the procurement team we managed the RFP process and vendor participation, assuring timelines were met and questions were answered. Once the carriers submitted their response, we composed all into a single spreadsheet, including the pricing and answer sections. This made it much easier to review and score the results based on an, “apples to apples” comparison. We included the cost of a project manager and all pricing associated with the project to hopefully prevent any surprises or unknown charges.

SDWAN Project / Next Steps:

We recommend that our clients down select 3-5 of the carriers to present in person. We scheduled these meetings. Once a decision was made, we worked collectively with the project manager, acting as the Luxury Retailers advocate, to ensure timelines were met as promised. We then facilitated the first bill review with the chosen providers. The CXT180 team then became an added resource for life cycle management, moves, adds, and changes of the solution throughout the contractual commitment. Because of our relationships and because we are carrier agnostic, we have successfully helped to ensure a quick response and resolution during any outages that may occur

Wireless and Wireline TEM Project:

Using the this process, CXT180 worked with this Luxury Retailer on their Wireline and Wireless TEM (Telecom Expense Management) project, leading multiple “Discovery Workshops,”helping to write and manage the RFP and initially sourcing 8 providers that participated in the RFP process. Once the RFP process was completed the CXT 180 team supplied a comparative matrix to our client’s procurement and IT teams, encompassing the RFP participants response and pricing. This was used for comparison and scoring purposes. Our client down selected 3 providers to present their solution in person before making their final decision. CXT180 worked closely with our customer and chosen providers during the conversion and implementation process.

“CISCO is rusted worldwide for their unwavering commitment to quality, innovation, and seamless network solutions, empowering businesses to thrive in the digital era.”
– Carla Looper