Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) audits aren't fun, but they're a fact of life for public companies in the United States.
Recently, a Fortune 50 corporation hit a snag while deploying a database technical pack for Control Compliance Suite. This customer had a Symantec Essential Support Services contract, so Paul, an IT administrator with the company, called Symantec Enterprise Support Services for help.
Hearing that the problem was affecting a vital SOX audit, the Symantec support representative recognized that this situation was business critical. He escalated the case and immediately routed Paul to the appropriate Symantec Enterprise Support Services group, which is staffed around the clock.
Nilesh, a manager with Symantec Enterprise Support Services, picks up the story from there.
"Paul explained the seriousness of the situation. Unless he could come up with a solution, their SOX audit would fall a week or more behind schedule. His entire group was under tremendous pressure to resolve this case—today!"
Nilesh first tried to simulate the problem on his system, but he couldn't duplicate the customer's more complex environment. Support and engineering share a campus, so Nilesh literally walked next door to the engineering building.
"I found the right person and we reviewed the log files that Paul had sent us," Nilesh remembers. "Our engineer said, ‘This looks familiar' and searched the internal support database. It turns out that Symantec engineering had developed a ‘quick fix' for another customer with a similar problem."
Enterprise Support Services then shifted into high gear. They uploaded the fix—a set of DLL files—to an FTP server, then used Web conferencing to help Paul install and test the solution. It worked perfectly—and the customer was back on schedule with their SOX audit.
This quick fix was indeed quick—the case was closed in five hours from the initial call. And the customer is more than pleased. "The case got a lot of attention within the customer's organization, up to the C-level," recalls Nilesh. "When word got around that the SOX audit was on track again, we were flooded with appreciation emails."
All in a day's work for Nilesh and his colleagues at Symantec Enterprise Support Services.