Cadwalader: Makes Help Desk Staff Instant BlackBerry Support Experts With BoxTone Software

Company

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, established in 1792, is one of the world's leading international law firms, with offices in New York, London, Charlotte, Washington and Beijing. An Am Law 100 firm, Cadwalader serves a diverse client base, including many of the world's top financial institutions, undertaking business in more than 50 countries in six continents.

The BlackBerry Environment

Cadwalader supports around 1000 BlackBerry smartphone users provisioned to five BlackBerry Enterprise Servers in North America, Beijing and the UK, and eight Microsoft Exchange mail servers. Efforts to harden the infrastructure have included placing individual BlackBerry Enterprise Server in regional offices; using a single, centralized SQL database; and deploying Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager to monitor messaging services.

The Challenge: Isolating Service Issues

As the firm’s mobile users came to rely more heavily on their smartphones, small service issues began to occur which the IT support team could not quickly isolate.

The troubleshooting process would typically begin with an inbound call to a Level 1 regional Help Desk, with the user complaining of an inability to send or receive email.  If a simple battery pull failed to clear the issue, the call would be escalated to a Level 2 Desktop Support for additional troubleshooting before moving on to Level 3 System Administration, where the team would systematically check the user’s mail server, underlying SQL database, MAPI connections, RIM SRP availability and carrier availability. Failure to resolve at this tier would lead to a final escalation to a Level 4 Infrastructure team or RIM technical support.

If all four support levels were touched, the entire troubleshooting process could last two hours or more across multiple departments. For a remote attorney who relies on a smartphone to enhance productivity and client service, such a lengthy time without service would be difficult to accept.

With little minimal visibility to root cause, and faced with the prospect of service issues recurring and users complaining, Cadwalader IT set out on a search for a more comprehensive solution to manage, monitor and support their global BlackBerry environment, including all of their mobile users.

The Choice: BoxTone for BlackBerry

After a full competitive review, Cadwalader selected BoxTone’s modular software platform, based in part on a strong recommendation from Research In Motion.  Says Grigoriy Gavrilov , one of Cadwalader’s System  Adminstrators: “Right off the bat we liked the fact that BoxTone did not require us to install anything locally on our BlackBerry Enterprise Server that could impair performance, as some of their competitors required.  The BoxTone Web interfaces also looked much better -- very self explanatory.  The BoxTone software fit all of the firm’s BlackBerry management and monitoring needs, from initial deployment right up until the present.” 

BoxTone’s ease of deployment and comprehensiveness of training quickly made an immediate impact, enabling the firm to quickly experience significant value. “BoxTone’s deployment process was very fast and very intuitive – with end-to-end platform visibility improving day one,” says Gavrilov. “The BoxTone Services team was also extremely knowledgeable and pleasant. They explained every bit and part of the installation – what each module and console does – and then called a few days later to make sure all was working properly. Since initial deployment, software patch upgrades have taken all of 30 minutes.”

How This Law Firm Uses BoxTone

Following installation, Cadwalader quickly moved to automate Level 1-4 BlackBerry support.

Regional Help Desk personnel, including the largest Help Desk at the firm’s New York City headquarters, were trained en masse and immediately began to use the BoxTone Service Desk module, enabling them to find and fix -- or intelligently escalate -- inbound call in three minutes or less.

Cadwalader’s System Administration team began to use BoxTone’s Incident and Problem Management modules to proactively find, fix and validate a wide variety of service issues including BES load issues, carrier unavailability or even a dead battery; and identify, isolate and resolve chronic issues, such as hung threads, across all BlackBerry platform communication links. 

And the firm’s Telecom team turned to BoxTone’s Asset, Expense & Compliance Management module to replace cumbersome spreadsheets previously used to inventory devices and rationalize carrier expenses.

Says Gavrilov, “Thanks to BoxTone software, basically I no longer have to troubleshoot at all. Alerts tell me proactively what service issues are happening where and why. I’ve used BoxTone to tell wireless carriers that their services are down – and have known their services are back up before they even call me.  I especially appreciate that BoxTone alerts are in a format that are easily understood. If the BES SQL database cannot be accessed, I want to be told just that specifically, and BoxTone does.”

He also relies on his BoxTone Remote Console, a handheld IT administrator view of individual, group and infrastructure performance, which enables him when outside the office to identify service issues and either execute the fix himself or delegate the fix to the appropriate staff member.

The Results

Benefits have accrued at every level of the Cadwalader IT organization.

Says Gavrilov, “With BoxTone, Help Desk escalations have decreased 60-80 percent. Our System Administration team used to get upwards of 20 calls per week, often learning of service issues from the users themselves, and lacking a good answer on what resolution steps were needed. Now the vast majority of those calls are resolved by the Help Desk.  Using their BoxTone consoles, every support tier knows about the issue and its root cause, can fully explain (if needed) to the smartphone user the issue, and can execute the fix.”

BoxTone has enabled the firm to experience significant data plan and device savings. “BoxTone reports identify for me low and no-use BlackBerry smartphones over 30, 60 and 90 day periods.  When my management saw these reports and realized units were just sitting somewhere, they immediately took them back and reassigned them to others,” says Gavrilov.

Automated aggregation of smartphone inventory information has saved the Telecom group hours spent assembling less-comprehensive spreadsheets. But carrier expense rationalization has been the standout. Says Hector Feliciano, Telecommunications Manager at Cadwalader, “Often when a carrier bill arrives, it lists only a phone number and the minutes expended. But our Telecom group needs to know the smartphone owner as well – most critically when the user’s allocated data plans have been exceeded.  BoxTone reports identify that critical missing piece, enabling the firm to both identify any offending users and bill them for any overages.”

Conclusion

Gavrilov says one particular incident involving BoxTone stands out more than others.

“One of our U.S.-based attorneys had headed out to Hungary on business. Sometime after landing, this attorney called our Help Desk to report that his BlackBerry was not working. My team instantly went into BoxTone, which confirmed that the user’s plan had not been set up with the carrier. We told the Telecom group, who called the carrier. Less than 30 minutes later the plan was in place. If not for BoxTone, the situation could have easily escalated into an unpleasant conversation and a time-consuming troubleshooting exercise – potentially costing the firm money and IT some valuable credibility. “

Adds Gavrilov, “I’m happy. Management is happy. Cadwalader’s experience with BoxTone software and services has been truly exceptional.”

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