"Our overarching business goal is to use technology as a competitive advantage, transforming both our customer experience and our go-to-market strategies," says Mannie Heer, senior director, IT Applications. "Symantec has grown both organically and through acquisition, and that leads to disparate systems. We really needed a technology solution that would bring it together, provide customer-facing solutions as well as back office systems that help deliver our products and services.

"Some of our challenges were around high-touch customer service. Customers would come into our website or phone channel and open a case. Then to collect evidence of a potential security event, a support engineer first had to set up an account on our FTP servers, create user credentials and provision that profile. They would create directory structures for that specific case, which the customer only had access to, then send the customer instructions by email on how to submit the evidence, which differed by region because of multiple FTP solutions. The customer would submit evidence, and then they would have to email or phone in to tell the support engineer that the evidence had been submitted. The engineer would then collect the evidence and attach it to the case. It was a stopstart process. Our tech support engineers, very qualified people, spent so much time collecting evidence rather than actually working, analyzing, and diagnosing the customer problem.

"We knew we had the right cornerstone applications, but we didn't have a solid integration platform that would allow us to bring those tools together. That was the key, a platform that would allow us to integrate, orchestrate, and provide a seamless process."

"We didn't have a standard way of integrating tools or applications, legacy systems or mechanisms. When we looked at integration platforms, we wanted to provide real-time messaging, real-time events, bring all our tools together so we could do business at a much faster rate. That was essentially it.

"We began our relationship with TIBCO on a small scale, integrating small backend systems and databases, and then grew to additional platforms and capabilities including TIBCO BusinessWorks™ and TIBCO® Managed File Transfer. We integrated them with Salesforce to automate that whole process, collect evidence, attach it to the case, and eliminate the need for the engineer to do all that manual work. They could then focus on diagnosing and helping the customer.

"We've taken these integrations and tied them into our Symantec process. We wanted to expose the assets to multiple channels, not only to Salesforce, a website, or a customer facing app. Customers or partners can connect to the integration platform through APIs and submit cases and evidence to our backend systems or to Salesforce. The integration layer allows us to do that. The advantage being that you're building once and exposing assets for many different opportunities."

Seamless Customer Experience

"With the trust that we put in the TIBCO toolset, we've been able to provide our customers a much more seamless experience, much more efficient mechanisms by which they can interact with Symantec.

"When a customer opens a case today, they're automatically provisioned through TIBCO BusinessWorks and the TIBCO Managed File Transfer platform. They're sent an email with instructions on how to upload internal and external CSV and XML files showing evidence. They'll follow those instructions, and once completed, a notification automatically goes out confirming evidence has been uploaded. The evidence will also be moved into Salesforce and attached to the case.

"By building the solution using the TIBCO tools, we really streamlined the interaction and the collaboration between the customer and the support engineer. We decreased time needed for events collection by 50 to 60 percent."

Increased Customer Satisfaction, Engineer Productivity

"We've increased customer satisfaction because of reducing touchpoints, and we've increased engineers' productivity because they're not spending time collecting evidence, but instead diagnosing customer issues. By focusing on what the customer needs versus an enabling capability, we improve customer experience and satisfaction."

Faster Time to Market

"TIBCO Managed File Transfer has become our standard for secure FTP, FTPS, and SFTP file transfer. We built it as a standalone platform so various parts of the organization can use it. We built it once, and by exposing it through discreet APIs, we provide the same functionality to multiple channels: Salesforce, partners, and customer-facing applications.

"We've increased our ability to develop and deliver tools faster and support the business with solutions and capabilities. We’re more agile and adaptive, and better able to help our internal customers who interact with our external customers."

"Our focus is on digital transformation and continuing to be the global security leader."