As a not-for-profit, the price for TSANet membership is set to ensure members receive a high value for their membership. Understanding the costs to provide multi-vendor support and the value of TSANet member benefits will ensure you maximize your return on investment.
Cost of building and maintaining a Partner Relationship
The core value of TSANet is the ability to build and maintain Partner relationships. The Table below shows the steps needed to establish a single Partner Support relationship and the time and cost associated. It is estimated that a minimum cost of $10,000 with a 3-month timeline is needed to establish each Partner relationship.
| Task | Without TSANet (3 months) | With TSANet (1 week) |
| Organize stakeholders | 1-week | TSANet provides |
| Define Support Requirements | 2-week | TSANet Provides best Practice |
| Agree Service Levels | 1 week | TSANet Provides best practice and monitors compliance |
| Define and test collaboration process | 3-week (More if no existing process exists) | TSANet Provides |
| Create Legal Agreement | 1 month (More if no legal template exists) | TSANet Provides common legal framework |
| Document and train support engineers | 1 week (More if no existing method exists) | TSANet Provides consistent process through TSANet Connect |
| Ongoing Management | 1 week / year | TSANet Provides |
Action for existing Members: Members should make sure that all Partners they work with are part of TSANet. Exceptions to the TSANet process adds cost to your organization and confusion for your support engineers. If you see a company missing from TSANet contact membership@tsanet.org
Impact of poor customer, employee, and partner satisfaction
Customer issues that require multi vendor collaboration should be viewed as an escalation event. Problems that are not easily isolated to a specific vendors product result in a very negative customer experience if you do not have the processes in place to collaborate with the other vendor to isolate and resolve the issue. Negative satisfaction will impact the following areas:
Customer: If vendors are not capable or prepared to work with each other the customer must take ownership of coordinating the vendors and resolving the issue. This is a high effort for the customer and drives negative satisfaction for both the customer and vendors support organizations.
Employee: Support engineers want to solve problems and not having a defined way of collaborating with the other vendors places increased pressure on the engineer working with the customer. This results in low employee satisfaction.
Partner: Partners who are not aligned with how to support customers with a multi vendor issue are often left finger pointing in front of the customer. This drives a negative experience with the Partner and results in a negative satisfaction with that Partner.
Action for existing Members: Ensure your support engineers are aware of the TSANet process and utilize it early in the troubleshooting process as needed.
Other TSANet Features (By Membership Level)
In addition to the core Partner Collaboration capabilities, TSANet membership provides other benefits.
TSANet Knowledge Exchange (All Members)
TSANet facilitates Technical Knowledge Exchange sessions from members. These sessions cover topics such as product information, troubleshooting methods and other information related to their products. Sessions are recorded and made available free to all members. Similar training sessions are valued at $200/end user.
TSANet Focus Groups (Standard, Premium and Elite)
TSANet hosts regional focus group meetings where members and industry though leaders share insights and best practices for support. Members also network and form relationships with their peers. These meetings are free for Standard, Premium and Elite members. Similar on-line or in-person conferences are valued at $1,000/day.
Single Sign-on: (Premium and Elite)
Premium and Elite members can connect their identity manage systems to enable single sign-on for their users. This provides unlimited user access to the TSANet connect platform without added user management tasks. This feature is free for Premium and Elite members. Similar SSO features from other vendors are priced at $10/user.
Critical Escalations Process (Premium and Elite)
This feature is optional to Premium and Elite Members of TSANet. It provides members a direct path to members’ critical escalations teams where traditional escalation processes do not support a critical customer situation. Setting up and managing this type of relationship would cost $10,000/Partner to setup and maintain without TSANet.
API Integrations (Elite)
Elite members have access to API integrations with TSANet Connect. This enables B2B collaboration methods with other members and integration capabilities with member systems. This feature is included for Elite members. Without TSANet, setting up a direct B2B interface between systems would cost on average $50,000 per partner if the capability is already in place with each vendor.
Partner Programs (Elite)
Elite members can host their Partner programs on TSANet. This provides a consistent method for onboarding and managing support relationships with 100’s of partners. With TSANet processes and staff managing the onboarding and ongoing management of Partners the Member’s investment in their own partner management team can be minimized. For example, TSANet has members that manage 200+ partners with a single partner manager.
OEM / Solution Support (Elite)
Elite members can design OEM or solution support models with Partners. Leveraging TSANet best practices and the TSANet Connect system provides for a consistent method of working with Partners that may have multiple relationships based on different product solutions.
Success Manager (Elite)
For Elite members, the TSANet Success Manager acts as the primary point of contact, ensuring a member’s success on the TSANet platform. This feature is free for Elite members. Similar services average $25,000/year.