CDW Managed Collaboration Services Reviews

I look to CDW for guidance regarding our overall IT support needs. Being new in my role, they've been helping me to understand how the network works, how our phone systems work. They are involved in a lot of different aspects of supporting our systems. Also, if I want anything new, I go to them first.

We use CDW for our Cisco phones and we're currently using them for a network overhaul of our firewall system. We're piloting the Meraki system with them. We're also using them to do a few printer projects around PaperCut, and for our Soundtrap platform.

We are a lot more efficient in troubleshooting when things go wrong because we have a better workflow. We know where to reach out and whom to ask for help. We are less likely to get caught up on problems because we can just reach out to them and they support us. We're way more efficient now that we better understand the services and the portal. I have everyone set up and I've added more people to our customer service calls. We're super-efficient because of them.

CDW has saved us a lot of time, and that's what we appreciate most about them. I was just on a call with someone this morning and they said, "What can I do to take some stuff off your plate? How can we help you?" They always ask us that, and that is the best.

When it comes to UCaaS and CCaaS, CDW has brought forth tons of different possibilities. That has been really helpful because I sometimes don't even know what is possible. I need to know what's going on and I can ask a lot of questions. It's very clear that they know what they're talking about. I don't feel like they're either lying to me or trying to sell me something. If I ask how something works, they'll explain it to me in a way that I feel that I can trust them. Their experience is definitely a plus in both.

I really appreciate CDW's consistency and persistence in communications. I use the Managed Collaboration platform's dashboard a lot less than I email or call my CDW rep to reach out to them. That's what we appreciate the most over any specific piece of it, that the customer service has been really helpful.

It's super-important that Managed Collaboration gives us a partner that can manage a hybrid environment with multiple vendor platforms. I feel that there's nothing I can't throw at them, things involving my job and tech, that they can't do. That's really nice.

They're pretty flexible. I haven't had an issue so far where I've asked for something being adjusted, or a subscription being fit to what we need, that hasn't worked out. They've been very flexible regarding our needs, especially because we work pretty slowly getting the ball rolling on things. They've been really good about extending trials and the like. That flexibility means we will have a solution that fits our needs in the future.

I have an issue with the portal. It would be nice to have more basic how-to reminders in the portal. Sometimes the Knowledge Base has so much in it that it's hard to figure out where I need to start. If you don't know what some of the things are, it can be complicated. For somebody like me, who may not be as network-savvy as my sysadmin, while he might be able to say, "Oh, I know what all these mean," I'm saying, "I just want the one that helps me with the phones."

Their information is often geared towards the systems side and maybe not towards the people who are less nitty-gritty technical. There is room for improvement there.

I started using CDW Managed Collaboration when I started this position, about seven months ago.

I would rate their customer service as a 10 out of 10 for sure. They're the best. I work with a few IT support organizations but CDW is definitely the most organized. They have the most eyes on every one of our tickets and cases, and we get really personalized attention. As somebody who is new in my role, they've really been a lifesaver in terms of supporting me with weekly cadence calls if I need them, and following up. They give me the support that I really need to make sure that things are running smoothly.

From a project management standpoint, they're great. They're really organized. We are always getting documentation for the different parts of a process. Project management is definitely a strength of theirs.

Positive

Their services may be more expensive than others, but I've never had a sense that we're not getting our money's worth. However, I can't say for sure that we've saved money using CDW's services.

In terms of services delivered on time, anytime that something has not been on time it's because we're holding it up on our end. It's not because of them. Sometimes we can't keep up with the tasks.

We have four people on staff who are actively using the CDW services. They are me as the director of educational innovation, my associate director of tech services, our help desk administrator, and our network sysadmin.

It's also important that we still have ownership in the day-to-day management of our communications systems. They're supporting us, overseeing things, and not the other way around. The balance they've struck on this is great. I don't feel they're ever going to do anything to a system that I don't know about. But at the same time, if they need to intervene, I know they can and will do so in a way that's appropriate.

They are a managed service provider who helps manage our corporate infrastructure.

We are using Cisco solution in our environment.

CDW has been available to make updates and changes for our solution based on our needs.

They handle our phone systems and manage our corporate infrastructure. It is very important to us that they can do different things.

Unified communications is really just our phone system. They have brought a lot of expertise and helped us to put our phone solution in place, then maintain it. That is specifically centered around our hardphone and softphone solutions. So, they have the expertise that has allowed us to do something in-house, which is something that we don't have. Since we don't have expertise in phone systems, and it is critical that we have phones for particular parts of our business, CDW is able to provide a level of expertise that we don't have in-house.

They definitely have the ability and flexibility, as a partner, to handle cross-platform technologies to meet our needs.

Overall, we have to be kept aware. However, when it comes to hands-on, the solution is completely handled by CDW. They have struck the right balance in this regard.

Their active monitoring is the most valuable feature. It is a 24/7 managed service. They are monitoring specific systems for us, which has really been a point of value for us. We don't have a network operations center that is 24/7. That is what CDW is for us.

I would like urgency at times on some of their issues or tasks. At times, it feels like we have to stay on top of them, when they should really be on top of it for us. My expectation is that they would stay on top of it from an urgency standpoint. They are good at a lot of it, but there are times where I feel that if something isn't a P1, then it disappears. It almost puts you in a situation where you want to say, "Everything is P1."

We have had a couple instances where things have gone on longer than we would have liked because of the project management.

I have been using it for two and a half years and my company has been using it for about six years.

I think CDW provides the expertise to be able to manage and evolve with us as we evolve as a company. They are flexible enough to grow and evolve as we grow as a company and evolve.

It is extremely important that CDW Managed Collaboration provides us with one place to call for support on the entire solution. Having immediate responses, 24/7 support, and people who can immediately take action on any issue or task is critical to any functioning business.

Their customer support is definitely one of the things that they are really good at. So. I am happy. You pick up the phone and get ahold of them. People are friendly and helpful. They put their customer support at a very high level.

Their project management is about average. Where I feel that CDW lacks quality project management. Their project managers seem more like schedulers and coordinators, not actually managing the project. At times, it seems like they aren't doing the follow up that you would expect of a project manager, e.g., the exploration. So, projects become really long running because the project manager hasn't stayed on top of it. It's not until we pick up the phone, and say, "What the heck. Where is this at?" that we get a sense of urgency out of their project management. 

Neutral

We have seen ROI.

CDW saves us a certain level of manpower, time, and money. Cost-efficiency is definitely a piece of it. They bring a level of expertise that we didn't have in-house.

It has reduced costs. We have seen a small amount of savings.

We didn't have this expertise in-house. Since it is a managed service, we don't have people who do this work. We are paying CDW to take this on for us. Therefore, it saves in-house time.

Their model makes sense. It is competitive for pricing. While I haven't gone out and put them against other providers at any time recently, we don't feel that we are getting a bad deal. From the pricing standpoint, we have been happy with where we are.

It meets our needs. I would rate them as 9 out of 10.

For the last four years, we have only been using the Cloud Collaboration Center (CCC) for our hosted VoIP system. Prior to that, we were using that as well as some managed services for routers and networking. They did manage some of our devices. We had some switches on-prem, but they don't do that anymore. We now have an in-house network team who manages the network devices. Then, in tandem with CDWG, we do some administration of the VoIP phone system with a Call Manager on our side. They host the call manager and all the servers for Call Manager in their data centers. Also, we have a VoIP router on two of our locations where we have phones.

I am using the hosted VoIP system in the cloud. That is what they do. Part of that is the four VoIP routers with their two data centers and one at each of my two locations. For on-prem, we use hosted VoIP calling, i.e. CCC. We don't use any messaging or WebEx with them. All we use are the desk phones and voicemail system right now. We have our desk phones, so we are not even in the cloud using a messaging system. We use Teams totally separate from CDW. All calling is through the CDW CCC hosted VoIP solution, and that is what we use.

Without phones, we would be in trouble.

We do not have any VoIP admins onsite or within our organization. That is why we decided to outsource it to CDW. That makes our job easier because we don't have a VoIP admin. I am glad that they are there to take care of that for us, as long as we pay them.

It is important if I am going to use CDW for services that they offer more than one type. So, if I did want to go with Cisco Webex, and I knew that they were a reseller and support/service provider, that would be very important to me. If I wanted to go with Teams and still use them, it would be very important that they had that wide selection, or at least the two top-tiered selections. Teams calling and Webex calling are the two top VoIP providers right now.

We had a period where everything was great with the UCaaS solution. Then, we moved to a new building, and it was still good. After that, we had a period of two years, and I don't know why, where the phone system would just be down. We had problems with BGP between the data centers connecting, and they couldn't figure out why. Their technicians would keep bouncing the questions back to us. It was very unsatisfactory for a while, and the executive management was very irritated. This is why we have started to look for another solution and are in that process now. 

They have been a lot better. We haven't been in the office, but they have been a lot better over the last two years. We had a lot of phone calls with our account management team and some other service management to let them know what poor service we were receiving, which was very unexpected because prior to that we had great service.

Having an engineer tell me, "Well, you need to check your BGP. Oh, it must be your router. Oh, it is your firewall." No, it wasn't and the experience was frustrating. Then, they said, "That's not acceptable. We are going to remedy that." Maybe it was a training issue for the people that they were using after hours. I don't know, but they seem to have gotten this issue resolved now.

I have been using them for eight years.

There are more than 200 people using it.

We have network and assistance teams, then an end user UX team. However, they do the maintenance for us, then the network team may work in tandem with them if there is an issue.

Managed Collaboration Anywhere provides us with one place to call for support of the whole solution. This is the number one most important thing for us because I don't want to have to call multiple numbers for support. That is a huge pet peeve.

When it is working, it works great. When it is not working, it depends on who is supporting it whether the support is great. It has been better lately, and we have gotten more attention.

I am happy with what they have done to help us for now. As long as you have a good project account manager, like I have, then I think that is very key to their business, e.g., making sure that they have their weekly or monthly cadences with their account.

We have been using them for almost 10 years. I think we used AT&T before that, and I hated them. They were horrible.

We set up a project plan and all the dates with the project manager. So, it went as planned. I think it was a month or something from the time that we entered into an agreement until we were able to start using the service. However, that was just based on the schedule that we put together and all agreed to. We were happy with that,

They did the setup for us, working on our network switches and installing the VoIP router. We did have to work in tandem with them on DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, etc. This did involve some of our input, but they did most of the technical work because they were the ones providing the service and installation.

Managed Collaboration Anywhere has helped save our organization time so people can focus on other initiatives because we don't have an on-prem VoIP admin onsite. While we do a little bit on the back-end, I am not setting up VPN tunnels and BGP sessions for different routers. So, I'm glad that they have someone to do that and a team to manage it for us. 

We are on a state contract, and they have negotiated state contract pricing. Since we are a state agency, we decided to go with them.

It is a little costly sometimes. However, we are on a state contract, so we don't really have any flexibility in the pricing because that was negotiated for the entire state.

They offer three service levels, which is fine, and we chose gold. We just want 24/7 support because our phone system has to be up 24/7.

We are moving away from needing on-prem devices. We are going with MS teams calling or WebEx calling, but we have not made that decision yet. That decision will be made over the next year some time once our contract ends here.

They offer Cisco Webex, if we want to move off of our current solution onto Cisco Webex. I think they also offer Teams, but I don't think that that has been decided yet as to which one we would be moving to. Once we move away from the hosted VoIP solution, we will either be going to Cisco Webex or use Teams calling. So, we have not made our decision yet.

I would price compare based on your project. Have an interview with every company. This is the same advice that I give anybody. No matter who you are going with for services, you should make sure that you interview them, ask a lot of questions, and see if they meet your needs specifically.

I don't really want to do phone setup nor management. Although, they have delegated that to us.

Recently, I would give them an eight out of 10.

We wanted to outsource our phone system and not have to manage it in-house. That's why we turned to CDW. We're using the service solely for our Cisco phone system. It's hosted and managed by CDW and they have an interface portal that we use to do some internal management. We can do some basic user changes and updates, but we can also put in a request to CDW for any management changes.

CDW Managed Collaboration provides us with reliability and it has really simplified scalability for us. For example, we're constantly adding, moving, and closing locations. Their service has really simplified that process for us, making it very easy for us to add phone service to a new location or to move it. That has probably been the biggest win.

In addition, we have been able to support the expansion of the scope of our phone system—it has grown about threefold—with the same number of people. We spend less time on the day-to-day care and feeding of the system. CDW has definitely saved us both time and the need to have more in-depth technical support staff available in-house. We don't have to have a deep technical bench to support the system. It has mitigated the need to increase our internal staff, even though the scope has grown.

One of the valuable features of CDW Managed Collaboration is having a deeper level of technical support available for troubleshooting and monitoring. We can rely on that technical support to do a lot of the heavy lifting in supporting the system.

It is important to us to still have ownership in the day-to-day management of our UCaaS operations in addition to having Managed Collaboration. CDW has struck the right balance in this regard. What I like about it is that the tools we have from them allow us to self-manage our phone system as much as we want. If we want to be heavily involved, we can be. And if we don't want to be involved, we can go that route as well.

It's also very important that Managed Collaboration provides us with one place to call for support of the whole solution. There is a specific team for the system that we're on, and issues generally go directly to that team. We don't usually get transferred around. They actually manage our phone service provider as well, so even if there are issues with the phone service provider, we can just call CDW and they will work with them on our behalf.

There is a little bit of a downside when you go through a provider for UCaaS, the downside being that you no longer have direct access to the system itself. That is something we had when we had it on-prem. There's a learning curve to using the CDW portal. Originally, the interface they provided to manage the solution was poor. However, they have upgraded that and the new solution is much better and much more powerful. It's a slight negative that you don't have direct access to the system, but the new management system probably provides enough support.

Other than that, the only complaint I have is regarding their mean time to resolution for some non-critical issues. We're a little more involved in managing the system because the people we have are technically proficient enough to do it. CDW does struggle with getting some of those lower-priority tasks done in a time that is acceptable to us. Sometimes, it's just easier to do things ourselves because we can get them completed quicker.

I've been using CDW Managed Collaboration for about five years.

From a project management standpoint, CDW has been pretty good. We usually get a dedicated project manager when we have a larger-scale project, such as the implementation of a large site. That's done outside of what's included in the standard service we use, but that has worked fine. For smaller projects, there isn't a dedicated project person; it's just ad hoc work.

Overall, our expectations have been met in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec.

Neutral

This is the first service we've used of this kind. Previously, we had the phone system on-prem and we had a third party that we leveraged for support, but they weren't hosting and managing the system.

We were under pressure due to some external projects at the time we signed up with CDW, so we got the system up and running with them in about two months. It was expedited and faster than normal.

On our end we had to provide information like who was going to get what type of phone, a list of users and their numbers; customer-specific information. It was pretty straightforward. There were some complexities around adapting to a production/manufacturing environment, but they weren't terrible.

The phone system is in about 60 percent of our organization but the number of people who interact with CDW is very small. It's just a handful of people on our internal support team. On the network side, we have four people involved, and there are a couple of people on our help desk team who interact directly with CDW, but that's pretty rare.

CDW Managed Collaboration has definitely reduced our costs. It's a subscription model, so the costs are higher, on paper, than having an in-house solution and the cost of the hardware for that. But overall, it has reduced our costs.

We did evaluate the third-party provider that was supporting our on-prem system, but they were quite a bit smaller as a company and that was the deciding factor in why we went with CDW.

My advice is that you should expect that you're still going to need to be involved in interfacing, but that's a general comment that applies to all external providers. You can't expect that you're just going to be able to outsource a phone system and not have anybody internally who understands the business requirements. You need someone who is able to relay that kind of information to the service provider. They manage a lot of different companies and they're not going to understand what the requirements of your particular business are.

You always lose some efficiency when you have to go to an external partner. You have to interface with them because they don't necessarily understand your business. That efficiency loss would probably be there with any partner. We don't have the internal employee base to support our system in the same way, so CDW's service has made us more efficient because we would have had to go to an outside partner no matter what, to support the large system we have. It gives us agility and ease in managing changes in our system.

The fact that Managed Collaboration is a partner that can manage a hybrid environment with multiple vendor platforms is not something we need to leverage right now. That could change though. We would like to look at using Microsoft Teams for unified communications and would leverage them for that, down the road.

What we were looking to achieve with CDW was to have a hosted, SIP-based phone system that we didn't have to completely manage internally. CDW provides those services and that's why we chose them. CDW manages our complete phone system. All the servers and services that make up the VoIP phone system are based in CDW's Chicago location.

The fact that CDW's Managed Collaboration gives us a partner that can manage a hybrid environment with multiple vendor platforms is very important to us because it takes all of that out of our own management responsibilities. We don't have to keep track of and keep all of those systems running. That's what CDW does for us.

CDW also allows me to continue functioning in other roles. I wear multiple hats here and I didn't have to take on another complete role of managing a phone system. It saves me the time I would have had to spend if I had had to add that as another hat. 

Also, to manage a phone system like this would require a staff of six or seven people, so it saves us the time and money required by all of those staff members.

From my experience, CDW's experience is extensive when it comes to UCaaS and CCaaS solutions. They've been providing these types of services and systems for a number of years. Anytime we have run into issues, if they have not had experienced people at the lower levels of their structure, they have been able to quickly go up the structure and find somebody who was able to analyze and resolve whatever the problem was.

And this phone system gives our people more options regarding how to manage calls. They're not necessarily strictly tied to their desks when taking and making calls. They have a mobile option as well, and can take and make their calls anywhere.

The most valuable function of the Managed Collaboration service is the ability to move people, their phones, and their phone accounts from one physical location to another, because we have two locations in Pennsylvania, one in Connecticut, and one in Chicago.

Another key factor in why we chose to go this route was that we have one place to call for support. We have one person that we deal with at CDW and that person handles things within CDW for us. It takes a lot of stuff off of our plate, internally.

We have been using CDW Managed Collaboration for five years.

The system CDW provided for our physical phone system is all Cisco stuff. Given that Cisco is a fairly large IT supplier, we don't anticipate that there should be any issues in the future with Cisco going out of business, nor do we expect we will have any problems getting additional or up-to-date equipment, through CDW, from Cisco.

CDW is in negotiations right now with a number of other companies to add additional functionality and features to the system, to accommodate the ever-changing legal aspects of phone systems.

On a scale of one to 10, I would give CDW's technical support a nine. Sometimes, it is a little difficult to get a UC engineer to get back to you in a timely manner. Those guys are stretched out and dealing with a lot of customers.

But generally, if we do have an issue, they have gotten back to us within a day and resolved the issue.

And CDW has met our expectations in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec.

Positive

We ran into an issue when we first put the phone system in, and it really had nothing to do with CDW's end of the spectrum. The problem was with our third-party firewalls. There was a little bit of incompatibility between settings on our firewalls and the settings on servers and firewalls in Chicago. That had to be ironed out and that took a little bit of time. It was about four to six months until we had the phone system fully up and running. But once CDW was able to pull in all the necessary expertise, with the third-party firewall company that we were using, everything went smoothly. They worked with that firewall company to get things resolved.

The pricing wasn't a whole lot different between CDW and the other companies we looked at.

We did evaluate a couple of other companies that provide VoIP systems, one of them being the local phone company that we were dealing with. The two biggest factors in our choice of CDW were their experience and their size. It was also important that they have the ability to support our multiple locations throughout the United States, as opposed to what the local companies would have been able to do.

It was also important to us to still have ownership in the day-to-day management of our phone system operations, in addition to having the Managed Collaboration service. That is something that CDW was able to also provide, something that, again, the local company was not able to do. I do have the ability to make minor changes to phones and phone accounts, and I can set up new phones and phone accounts on my own. And they provide a very nice interface through which to do that. That means I don't necessarily always have to go to CDW to have something done. 

Before you completely commit, make sure that your internal network structure will support the specific phone equipment that CDW would be providing you with. We ran into a problem where our specific firewalls had some incompatibility issues. Other than that, I have no other issues that somebody should watch out for.