Remote Support - Good for you and Good for the Environment

Support of customers, either technical or user is one of our core service offerings and has been part of the business since its inception 25+ years ago. Back in the 90's the majority of support was on-site, meaning an engineer had to drive to the business, fix or replace and then leave. Remote support was available but it was slow, awkward to use and only really effective for fixing application software issues. When broadband hit the exchanges we were able to enhance our remote support offering to include desktop support and some increased server support using HP's ILO but in many cases a site visit was still required to solve hardware issues. 

As we moved into the 21st centurary, innovation in the remote support infrastructure combined with redundant and fault tollerant hardware meant that we could do even more remotely without an engineer being required there and then. RTB (Return to base) hardware exchange became more common place and we built our own branded remote support kit which used GSM (2G back then) to establish an encrypted tunnel to our NOC allowing for the remote support and control of server consoles via VGA and PS2. Yet more advances in the market with IP Based KVM's and unified services like Citrix GoToAssist pushed the number of issues we could solve remotely well into the 90% bracket. By embracing Remote Support as a service we're able to respond to customers much faster, and dramatically reduce the time to fix, whilst maintaining very high service levels. I clearly remember regularly having to tell customers that their engineer is at another site and will be on their way within the hour, but today its more like an engineer with be with you in a minute and have the issue resolved in five. 

Site Visits Cumulative Figures

Our data is based on visit reports logged on the system and we took milage from the leased car total mileage for the years covered. Its not 100% accurate because there were some site visits that were return visits (return to base, collect parts, return to customer) and engineers always added some personal miles, but its a good indication. What you need to consider is that in 2018, we logged 297k tickets via the helpdesk but made only 1456 site visits, the rest were resolved remotely. 

This represents a 75% reduction in site visits and a 86% reduction in Co2 emmissions over the last 18 years and an ever increasing number of support requests. 

In 2017, the company selected the Toyota Prius PHEV as our feet vehicle providing increased economy and all electric inner city travel. We have dedicated charging stations on site and use 100% renewable energy. We were recognised by the Government's Go Ultra Low initaitve for our innovation in this area, and we thank them for their support and for trying to encourage eco friendly vehicles into UK businesses. 

We don't yet have the figures for these vehicles overall but we're expecting a significant drop in Co2 for the years 2017-2020. 

GEN, as a long established company is proud to heavily invest in eco friendly initiatves from solar power to electric fleet and from plastic and waste reduction to energystar certified datacentres. Green is our future and as usual we're ahead of the curve.