The Nexus Blog

July 7, 2008

Investing for Success

Filed under: General — Tags: — nexusis @ 11:28 am

by Deron Pearson
Nexus President

It is no secret that the economy has slowed down. In many industries, sales are either growing slightly or are flat compared to previous years. Many companies have resorted to cost-cutting measures to protect their profits.

At Nexus, we believe that in order for us to succeed in the near as well long-term, we needed to invest heavily in our organization. In the last year, Nexus has invested over $5 million dollars to increase the productivity and effectiveness of our associates, while also reducing excessive costs. Some of these investments include:

  • Addition of over 60 resources in the Sales, Engineering, Project Management, Service and Implementation teams.
  • Spent over $1.5 million on Production network and system upgrades to leverage the very same productivity tools we sell.
  • Spent over $1 million on Nexus associate training to upgrade our capabilities for our customers.
  • Spent over $250K on our internal tools (software, internal departments) to provide a higher level of customer satisfaction.
  • Tripled our Marketing budget to provide more events for our clients to learn about advanced technologies.

Additional Resourcesallows us to provide more of a “local touch” and faster response times to our customers.

  • Added 40 Sales and Pre-Sales Engineering resources to increase our “feet on the street” and complete our statewide market segmentation.
  • Pre-Sales dedicated ASE to SE ratios are at an industry best 2.5 to 1.
  • Added a PSS organization to have specialized focus on every Advanced Technology • Added two Project Management Offices with a total of 20 associates to ensure all client projects are handled locally.
  • Added 10 deployment engineering resources.
  • Added 5 resources to the Nexus Technical Assistance Center (NTAC).
  • Added a Quality Assurance Supervisor to the NTAC.
  • Added personnel to our Arizona, and Pacific Northwest locations.
  • Opened a new office in Las Vegas, NV

Network Upgradeprovides our associates the most advanced hardware and applications to become more productive and efficient. Also allows us to provide world-class demonstration facilities to our customers.

  • Spent $1.5 million in a fully functional production network available for demonstration purposes
  • Upgraded LAN/WAN with a complete deployed secure model
  • Unified Communications 6.0 with CUPC – Presence and Mobility
  • TelePresence at four offices (Valencia [HQ], Tustin, San Diego, and Pleasanton)
  • Digital Media System (DMS) in most offices
  • Unified Communications demo kits for all nine offices

Upgraded Tools for Customer Satisfaction and Deliveryensures that you are receiving a variety of communication mediums about our service.   

  • Netformx
  • Active Docs to be used for Statements of Work and Proposal Templates
  • Re-built NOC
  • Customer Advocacy Department
  • Initiated Customer Satisfactions Surveys at the completion of Service Orders

Increased Marketing Budget provides you opportunities to gain insight about the latest technologies through our client events, website, and blog.

  • Tripled the number of Client Events to an industry-leading 10 per month including
    •  
      • Bi-yearly Technology Showcase (Open House) events
      • Off-site Lunch and Learns
      • Webinars
      • Re-branded company slogan to “Connect Collaborate Create
      • Redesigned the Nexus website (www.nexusis.com)

Increased Nexus Associate Training Budgetguarantees that our associates have knowledge of the latest advanced technologies and how to apply them to benefit your organization.

  • Nexus has spent over $1 million dollars in training for our associates. 
    • New classes and learning aids for Cisco new releases for Cisco Certified Networking Associate, and Cisco Sales Expert were implemented, these alone exceeding costs of $275,000.
    • Nexus invested extensively in demo labs which aided our talent in developing and honing their technical knowledge. Specifically, Nexus spent over $700,000 in demo labs for the Company and our employees.
    • Cisco CQS, CSE, and over two dozen specialized Cisco classes for the sales team.

We have the most qualified team of experts in the industry. We are extremely pleased that our partners see the value of our organization. We are proud of our recent accomplishments including being the recipient of the Cisco Master Unified Communications Specialization as well as the three awards received at the recent Cisco Partner Summit. In the past four years, we have received nine awards, putting us in elite company worldwide.

We are considered the go-to partner for sales and deployment of Cisco TelePresence worldwide. We have purchased and installed our own units in four of our locations: Valencia, Tustin, San Diego, and Pleasanton. We are consistently using these units, while cutting down significantly on our travel costs.

Through all the investments and accomplishments Nexus has made, we are well positioned to take care of our most important asset, our joint customers. Without them, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Our customers constantly provide feedback, both positive and negative, that we take seriously. We use this feedback to help shape our organization, take corrective action when necessary and most importantly, resolve issues quickly and diligently

Thank you for considering Nexus. We hope to connect, collaborate, and create with you soon.

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