Credit: Innovix Distribution
At the height of Covid-19, with Singapore locked down during a prolonged circuit breaker period, Innovix Distribution moved to maintain high levels of customer service by leveraging the expertise of Axiom IT Solutions to roll out Microsoft collaboration technologies.
Triggered by an employee-wide shift to remote working - initiated during the early weeks of the pandemic - the distributor sought external expertise in response to a rise in unanswered inbound calls coming through to company offices, located in the Ang Mo Kio district of the city-state.
With customer service negatively impacted, Innovix partnered with Axiom IT Solutions to implement a Microsoft Teams Phone System, allowing employees to support value-added resellers and vendors “without disruptions”.
Despite already having a business continuity plan in place, additional steps to shift an entire workforce to remote working posed initial delivery and communication challenges, especially from a sales perspective.
“Lockdown caused many businesses to experience technical transitions of their own, which meant our clients required our expertise even more than usual,” acknowledged Joanna Teo, senior product executive at Innovix. “Our sales team had to make frequent customer calls from home and voiced that they were uncomfortable sharing their personal phone numbers with clients.”
In addition to rising staff privacy concerns, remote working also impacted response times with customer calls unanswered due to the difficulty of managing multiple calls and wait lines when using only personal devices. As outlined by Teo, this led to a “less-than-optimal customer experience”, during a period of heightened channel demand for technical expertise and support.
In response, the distributor deployed a range of cloud-based collaboration tools - spanning Microsoft Phone System, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams - to enhance customer service levels, shaped by an Axiom Teams Connector Service offering.
“We worked with Axiom IT Solutions to roll out the Microsoft Phone System with Axiom Teams Connector company-wide,” Teo added. “We already had Microsoft Teams in place across the business, so the transition to enable voice calls through Teams was swift, smooth and seamless.”
Following the deployment, Innovix - which also operates as a Microsoft distributor - reported a spike in customer satisfaction with employees leveraging Teams to respond to reseller queries and service requests.
“This showed our clients that we were here for them during this difficult period,” Teo said. “It also gave our resellers a real-life example of Microsoft’s effectiveness as an all-in-one communication solution, which they could share with their end users.
“With the seamless transition to Microsoft Phone System, a number of Innovix’s customers mentioned that they didn’t even realise the company was working from home. That’s the seamless result we were looking for to provide our clients, and we found it with Microsoft 365.”
Meanwhile in early September, Tech Data entered into an agreement to acquire Innovix in a blockbuster move designed to expand presence across Asia Pacific. Subject to customary closing conditions, Channel Asia revealed that the transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of Tech Data’s fiscal year 2021.
The main motivation behind the acquisition is to “accelerate” Tech Data’s growth in next-generation technologies, with a specific focus on cloud, security and endpoint offerings. This is in addition to expanding business in the key geographies of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Headquartered in Hong Kong, Innovix goes to market as a leading technology distributor across Asia, forming part of Fortune Global 500-listed Jardine Matheson Group, which spun-off Jardine OneSolution Holdings (JOS) and its subsidiaries in a multimillion-dollar acquisition by Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) in December 2019.
Leveraging more than 60 years market experience, the distributor specialises in the delivery of cyber security, networking and digital infrastructure technologies, alongside hybrid IT, end-user computing and software solutions.
Key vendors across the region include Dell Technologies, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP and Microsoft, as well as Lenovo, Sophos, Trend Micro, Veeam and Vertiv among others. Terms of the deal will also see Tech Data gain access to an ecosystem housing more than 8000 channel partners.
