Effective distribution of superior IT products is only half the success for WSI. The other half is providing a superior and competent post-sales support through a Technical Center—enabling WSI to offer premier end-to-end service to its valuable partners and end-users.

Established in 1983, the WSI Technical Center is an authorized repair and service center for all product lines carried by the company. The center’s main objective is to offer superior pre- and after-sales support to resellers and end users by providing consultation services, repair, and maintenance services. The center also sells spare parts for one of its products.

WSI’s team of engineers undergoes regular training and examinations with the company’s principals to keep them updated on the latest technologies and techniques. The engineers are certified to act for and in behalf of its principals to do consulting, repairs and services on their products.

Specifically, the company has separate teams for hardware and software but the teams are expected to have some baseline platform knowledge. The hardware staff are certified for operating systems, working knowledge of most desktop productivity software like Microsoft Office, anti-virus software and the like. Its firewall range is an excellent example of a hybrid product. It is both hardware and software. Its software people know enough about PCs and servers for them to doconfigurations and first-line diagnosis.

Today, the technical support and service team has pre-sales engineers and postsales engineers who are technically equipped to cater to its resellers and enduser requirements. To leverage on the technical savviness of its quick-to-learn staff, the engineers are trained with more than one technology skill. A number of customer service representatives are in house to facilitate consulting, support and services needs. It also has administrative staff to support the service-center operations.

The WSI Technical Center started under the name of STAR Micronics Service Center (SMSC) in 1983 to support STAR printers, which was the first product line of WSI. SMSC was also appointed as an authorized service center for OTC and AMT printers, Minuteman and Phoenixtec UPS lines.

After taking on the HP Deskjet product line in 1992, the service center became the first HP Dealer Premier Support Providers (DPSP) in 1994. It was also at this time that SMSC changed its name to WSI Technical Center (WSITC) to better reflect the services for the different brands carried by WSI.

In 1999, WSI Technical Center received the HP Mt. Everest Service Award for reaching the highest sales in HP spare parts. In 2000, WSITC was appointed a Master Parts Reseller (MPR) for HP spare parts.

As an MPR, WSITC is authorized to sell all types of HP genuine spare parts to both resellers and end-users. This year also saw the Automated Query System developed and implemented.

In January 2002, WSITC was awarded the HP Authorized Service Provider of the Year 2000-2001 for outstanding service. It also received a special award from HP Parts Sales Division of Singapore for reaching its quota for the most number of quarters in 2000-2001 in the whole of Southeast Asia, an accomplishment considering that it was WSITC's first year as a master parts reseller.

WSITC is prepared to provide a higher level of service and support. Some skills that are being developed are on network security, network management, business intelligence, and disaster recovery.

The company is constantly looking for excellent software products that complement very powerful hardware lines to support the demands of the market.

As computer hardware is a strategic investment for many businesses, the best way to protect it is to ensure that it performs well for as long as possible. And that is WSI’s ultimate goal with its highly-competent technical center