Management

How CDW’s IT Services Can Assist Agencies on the Road to Digital Transformation

New acquisitions provide more expertise in solutions, deployments and services.

Brian Costello is director of civilian sales for CDW•G.

Digital transformation has long been important to the federal government, and recently the interest in and need for it has accelerated. Today, customers require more assistance with their IT upgrades than they once did, for a variety of reasons.

The pandemic brought one reason into sharp focus: Any solution that starts as a commercial, off-the-shelf product with added customization is more easily accessed in a remote environment than a custom-built application created by a systems integrator 20 years ago.

As the pandemic wore on, agencies also found that they needed more hands on deck to complete their missions, whether that was sorting through tax returns or monitoring foreign cybersecurity threats.

Now, as older workers retire and take their knowledge and skills with them, they’re not being replaced by younger workers at the same rate — and sometimes, the older workers who stay have valuable experience and institutional knowledge but don’t have the IT skills needed in an agile, DevOps world.

So the federal government has begun to pivot to a solutions-oriented environment. Agencies are looking for partners who can not only design and implement new technology and provide it for purchase, but also manage it once it’s been deployed.

Whether that’s because they want to focus more on the mission than on the deployment of new technology or because they’ve lost experienced personnel and institutional knowledge, federal agencies are looking for ways to fill those capability gaps.

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Solutions Capabilities Can Accelerate Transformation for Agencies

At CDW•G, we consider ourselves a company that can get your agency the technology it needs in a very short time while providing excellent customer service. We’re also a company that can provide agencies with the people they need to keep that technology running.

We’re becoming a new CDW•G, transitioning to a services-led organization. Over the past few years, we’ve made several acquisitions that strengthen our ability to provide the solutions and services that agencies want. Our acquisition of Aptris gives us more capabilities in the ServiceNow arena, for example, and our acquisition of Focal Point Data Risk accelerates our abilities in identity management. We’re also having great conversations about how to extend our IGNW and Sirius Computer Solutions acquisitions further into the federal sector.

It would take a lot of time to grow those practices organically, and we want to bring these capabilities to our customers as soon as we can. Right now, we’re integrating these companies into the CDW•G brand, and soon you’ll see them renamed as new CDW•G services.

Our customers already know what we can do in terms of commodity buys, and we’re leveraging that knowledge as we help them understand what we’ll be able to offer as professional services. With the Aptris acquisition, for example, we now have ServiceNow capabilities in the areas of deployment, maintenance, ongoing support and design consulting, among others.

Because federal customers are now coming to us saying “I have a problem” rather than “I need to replace this part,” we will be able to provide value by helping them solve problems. We’re just getting started, but we see significant opportunities for our customers.

Agencies Seek Support to Maintain New Technology Deployments

We can deploy new technology for an agency, guide its leaders through integrating it into their practice and stick around to help as they get acclimated to the new IT environment. A good partner is just as important — if not more important — in a solutions context as in a simple deployment.

These days, the partner an agency works with to keep a technology solution going is almost more important that the one that sold them the technology in the first place. CDW•G has a positive reputation and good relationships with our existing customers, and we want to help them with this new part of our portfolio.

Customers know us, and they trust that we know what we’re talking about. They know we’ll provide the same level of support with professional services that they’ve received from us for infrastructure.

See how CDW is partnering with Uncommon Grit and HP to get technology in the hands of vets and federal employees

This article is part of FedTech’s CapITal blog series. Please join the discussion on Twitter by using the #FedIT hashtag.