Cornastone, the black-owned and managed enterprise solutions integration company, has officially established a dedicated 24x7 call centre for its South African customers utilising HP hardware and software solutions.
The call centre forms an integral part of the HP Authorised Services Management Partner (ASMP) programme for HP Software Services. The ASMP programme allows qualified business partners such as Cornastone to become the single point of contact for their customers` HP support services needs.
"By leveraging our help-desk and contract administration skills, as well as knowledge of the customer`s environment, we are able to provide a one-stop shop to meet the demand for after-sales service excellence," says Mark Jones, professional services manager at Cornastone.
"This means we provide all first line hardware support and software support services to our customers, with HP providing hardware break-fix support," he says.
The support centre employs cross-trained support engineers - all of whom are HP trained and certified. It provides customers with an escalation service which personalises support and helps to address complex IT issues.
Cornastone also provides ongoing administration and renewal of the relevant contracts. Customers currently include the Bank of Athens, Cape Town Unicity and MetCash.
The Cornastone help-desk and support centre is complemented by a 24-hour outsource service level agreement (SLA) with Sykes, which also covers support call logging. The all-hours service (available on 086 000 1718) guarantees that all support queries are addressed no matter when or where they are generated.
"We have traditionally provided the support to customers using HP solutions, but this announcement officially cements Cornastone`s role as a preferred HP technical support and maintenance partner.
"We now provide a value-added service to HP support contracts, covering all software - as well as hardware. By monitoring and administering all support contracts, we are able to save considerable amounts of time and ensure that efficient service is available to contracted customers," Jones explains.
"We have taken ownership of each and every support call generated. This not only creates a far more efficient service in that we are able to attend to customer support queries in a timely fashion, but it also improves customer satisfaction levels," he concludes.
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Cornastone is a black-owned company founded by two IT professionals and entrepreneurs with an extensive track record of delivering business value to stakeholders. Lufuno Nevhutalu, a founder of Yashu Solutions (Pty) Limited, before merging Yashu Solutions business interests into Computer Configurations Holdings Limited in 1998, brings entrepreneurship and proven business leadership skills.
Hamilton Ratshefola, a former IBM and CCH executive director, has extensive business leadership and sales experience. Hamilton led the IBM Public Sector business from a R30 million business in 1995 to a R300 million business in 1999.
BMI-T Forge Ahead and Black IT Forum honoured both Hamilton and Lufuno as members of Top 20 Black IT Professionals in South Africa in 1999.
In 2001, Cornastone was HP VAR of the Year with over R80 million of sales in HP enterprise infrastructure. In 2002, Cornastone was voted the ICT Top Achiever Company of the Year 2002 with sales around R100 million.
Cornastone has assembled an array of highly skilled professionals at management and technical level, with outstanding track records in sales and solutions delivery.
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