Responding Around the Clock

Continued

With Oracle Priority Service, ViaSat is confident that its severity 1 and 2 issues will be responded to within one and two-and-a-half business hours, respectively. "With Oracle Priority Service, we realized a 55 percent reduction in the resolution time of our severity 1 and severity 2 issues," notes Dankberg. Regardless of the priority status of an issue, ViaSat knows it can expect a response from Oracle by at least the next business day.

"When we were going live after an upgrade, Oracle engineers worked throughout the weekend to make sure that a critical issue was resolved. Because we can count on a rapid response from Oracle Support, my IT team can focus more on supporting our own business and the development of our wireless products. Oracle Priority Service keeps our mission-critical systems running at peak efficiency around the clock," he adds. "It gives us peace of mind to know that when problems do occur, we get the attention and expertise needed to resolve them quickly."

The new service has also enabled the company to strengthen its availability to both its customers and its systems' daily users. "With Oracle Priority Service, our CRM [customer relationship management] systems are continuously available, enabling us to provide our customers with outstanding service," says Dankberg. "We've also been able to minimize downtime that affects our daily users. We continually achieve availability approaching 99.99 percent. Maintaining our track record of superior uptime is critical to our business success."

The end of quarter and fiscal year-end are both critical times for ViaSat, a 20-year-old company with approximately US$500 million in annual revenue. "Oracle Priority Service is a huge advantage to us during those times," says Dankberg. "We know we can count on our Oracle business applications to be available when we need them."

The PSM also leads quarterly reviews to discuss ViaSat's plans and assess performance against best practices. During the quarterly meeting with Dankberg and his team, the PSM reviews the support activity and the statistical measures for the quarter. With this information, Dankberg is better able to determine where to focus his team's future efforts.

Superior Technology

ViaSat strives for innovative designs, quality products, and short time to market. These challenges are intensified by the fact that the company has many different business models, which support one of the broadest product lines in the industry, including high-volume commercial products, custom-built products, and products to meet government requirements. With more than half of its approximately 1,400 employees holding degrees in engineering, ViaSat understands and values superior technology. Dankberg says it was an obvious decision to choose Oracle application products to drive its business. In 2001 ViaSat selected Oracle E-Business Suite to replace its existing SAP and Baan systems, to help the company manage its business models, inventories, finances, customer relationships, and more.

To benefit from the latest technology enhancements, Dankberg and his IT team stay current with new software releases, updates, and patches. "We're constantly upgrading and putting in new modules," says Dankberg. "We stay very current with Oracle releases. We're pretty aggressive about enlarging our Oracle footprint. Oracle Priority Service enables us to get through the upgrade process much faster, keeping my department on schedule. In particular, it helps our in-house Oracle systems experts conserve their valuable time. Because we are confident that the Oracle Support team will resolve any issues quickly, we can count on smooth software upgrades, patch installations, and testing."