Nexus Communications Technology provides state of the art IP and IT services for modern multi-site businesses and healthcare facilities. As a managed service provider (MSP) Nexus designs, installs and manages anything that can be given an IP address, from tablets and Wi-Fi access points to surveillance cameras, workstations, IP phones, networks, firewalls, printers, fax machines, and other IP access controls. The company provides turnkey installation, maintenance, and support solutions.

The company takes great pride in their work, but found that their approach to site surveys was difficult, inefficient and lacking in professionalism. As the projects continued to grow in size and complexity, collecting accurate details about a large variety of devices and presenting them to customers in a clear and organized fashion was becoming an ever-increasing challenge. The team tried a few different options but all came up short.

“We started off creating a visual on paper floor plans using little icons,” said Sebastian Hernandez, chief technology officer for Nexus. “During a site walk, we would take pictures with a cell phone camera, gather notes, and then have to pull it all together back at the office to create a proposal.” 

Jim Mazzarella, CEO of Nexus Communications Technology, added, “Using tickets, we would write a number at every location and then go back and fill in an Excel spreadsheet with all the information pertaining to that number.” This proved to be extremely time consuming causing the team to spend more hours regrouping at the office to prepare a quote than they did collecting the data in the field.

Nexus tried alternatives that were specific to video surveillance design, but because they work with a wide variety of IP-based technologies, it was too limiting. “We wanted to incorporate every aspect of what we do in the survey, be it phones, computers, IP security cameras, Wi-Fi access points, etc. said Hernandez We even tried to create our own application but it wasn’t coming together as quickly as we hoped.”

At about the same time, System Surveyor, a simple-to-use, mobile system design software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution was releasing a major upgrade. “System Surveyor announced their new functionality and the addition of 60 new IP and IoT elements and icons, so we took another look and realized they had what we needed,” Mazzarella said.

The team started using System Surveyor as an app on their iPad tablets with support for all of the different system types the company implements and supports. They found the simplicity, mobility and comprehensive system coverage just the right combination for their needs.

“The new solution eliminated the need to use five or six different tools to collect information needed for projects and ongoing service engagements,” Mazzarella said. “While we may take a little more time to do the site survey walk, it takes us about 1/5^th of the time back at the office to put proposals together. It has become a key tool to serve our customers and differentiate our services.” 

The team uses the time savings to increase client proposals to grow sales and to improve service delivery and margins. 

Nexus also discovered another high value service opportunity using System Surveyor. Multi-site businesses and long-term care facilities rarely have a central repository of every piece of IP equipment, causing potential maintenance and service issues. If the company could capture photos, MAC and IP addresses, serial numbers, login credentials, and other device information; they could better provide complete service delivery. Before System Surveyor, it was not viable to provide as a service offering. Now, not only can the team capture this information for new project implementations, they can provide “Visual Asset Management as a Service.” The team can capture and document all IP devices on a digital floor plan across a multi-site organization. 

“System Surveyor enables us to provide better maintenance services and provides valuable asset information for our customers,” Hernandez said. “With this data, we can pull up a device on site or back at the office and see a history of everything that has been done with it. This is a new service we can provide that would be too difficult to do without System Surveyor. It’s so easy and clean to click on the asset and see all the information right there.”