Background
A member of the Envista global family of more than 30 trusted dental brands, DH Dental provides dental materials to a global network of B2B clients. Its needs are diverse enough to warrant the establishment of separate internal teams for its cloud, voice, and infrastructure activity. While necessary, the separation of these groups, combined with the sprawling geographic nature of DH Dental’s business interactions, opened the doors for a variety of technology-related challenges.
Challenge
DH Dental’s network team was preparing to start a global transition from MPLS to SD-WAN. The objective was to have two internet circuits (for redundancy and to minimize service disruptions) across each of its approximately 100 global locations.
The dental supplier was looking for a partner that could source and locate internet services around the world. This demanding transition would be a challenge in the best of scenarios. DH Dental’s six-person IT team lacked the time needed to successfully contract, migrate, install, and turn up services in so many locations within the target timeframe. The detailed process required finding ISPs across national borders that were a) global, b) reselling local ISP services, and c) had the required bandwidth for DH Dental’s needs. In addition, each circuit required detailed research and impeccable selection. The task would have been overwhelming for such a small team of engineers.
Transformation
Working with vCom enabled DH Dental to create a clear, streamlined path to its migration objectives. For each location, vCom offered multiple options, often engaging with local CLECs previously unknown to the DH Dental team. vCom ran a Buyer’s Journey on a subset of the 100 locations analyzing the diversity of dual connection options before choosing providers. Once each location’s status was assessed, a dedicated project manager was assigned to decommission the old circuits and oversee implementation, conduct testing and turn up, and get each new circuit into production.
vCom enabled DH Dental to access a robust portfolio of available circuits for each location in countries including Brazil, India, China, Mexico, Italy, and Portugal. Typically, this kind of accessibility requires working with someone in each country and is challenging to manage remotely. However, vCom’s pre-established resources and strong network of providers streamlined accessibility, the depth of options available for each location, and the speed at which they were able to implement required changes.
Results
On this project, DH Dental’s partnership with vCom began with the establishment of stable circuits in each of the company’s locations. Almost 75% of these installations were international and no longer dependent on a single provider. Transitioning to SD-WAN created greater flexibility from a client standpoint, as its software-defined and cloud-based nature enabled DH Dental to adapt to changing circumstances without lengthy deployment times.
“I’m very grateful for what they did for us,” says Heiko Kraft, Network Engineer at DH Dental. “Without them, our SD-WAN deployment wouldn’t have been the success it is. From that point on, we’ve used so many more services of vCom.”
Along with a significant boost in connection stability, DH Dental experienced a significant reduction in overhead expenses. The organization saw a 60% decrease in costs by moving from MPLS to SD-WAN, a project savings of $3 million in the first three years. When locations were closed, vCom was able to terminate circuits or migrate them to other locations without penalties. “98% of the work that was done was taken care of by vCom,” said Kraft.
Utilization of vCom’s centralized platform vManager, enabled DH Dental to increase internal efficiencies, beginning with a single source for all its data. Previously, a member of the DH Dental team invested several hours each day into overseeing a dozen different carriers through multiple portals. With everything centralized in vManager, the team has visibility into the cost and status of each circuit. MACD requests flow through vManager to vCom’s experts to handle. Circuits are monitored 24/7, and any issues are ticketed (and often resolved) before the DH Dental team is even aware of a problem.
Finally, the company took advantage of vCom’s Managed Pay service, enabling vCom to pay bills on their behalf, resulting in a decrease in late fees and streamlined payment process.
“I can 100% recommend vCom,” says Kraft. “There was always a 100% timely response, the project managers have been super responsive and provided answers … the team always made an effort to stay close to us to understand what we were doing. I think we’re still only using a small piece of the services.”
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