Manna Hospitality Boosts Strategic Focus with Managed Services and Support from Hughes
“The level of detail and responsiveness throughout our rollout has been a huge relief. Technicians have equipment on hand ready to deploy, and they resolve issues quickly. Our team can finally apply their expertise to look more strategically at the new initiatives we want to pursue instead of being pulled away by constant issues.”
– Amy Hoover, Chief Information and Technology Officer
Customer
Founded in 1988, Louisville-based Manna Hospitality Group operates several brand franchises, including more than 130 Wendy’s locations. Driven by a culture of honesty, integrity, and open communication, the minority-owned company believes in knowing and supporting its people and has a strong focus on employee development and opportunities for growth.
Challenge
Manna Hospitality Group always prioritizes business growth. Yet, Manna’s previous managed services provider (MSP) struggled to deliver timely support, often requiring constant escalation just to get basic responses on tickets and service requests. The installation process was inconsistent and inefficient, with technicians at times refusing to complete work and citing onsite complexities or other obstacles. Additionally, communication from the prior MSP was frequently inadequate. They failed to proactively recommend service improvements in areas with poor connectivity or suggest solutions to ongoing operational challenges.
The relationship lacked trust and reliability, and insufficient support forced Manna to troubleshoot and fix many issues themselves, find and negotiate with alternate service providers directly, and self-manage Fortinet devices and other technical aspects of their environment. A full-time IT person was also assigned to manage telecom billing. The significant internal workload and resource drain made the relationship unsustainable, as Manna’s team was frequently pulled from strategic or high-value work to handle issues that should have been managed by the MSP.
Hughes Solution
Partnering with Hughes for network management freed Manna Hospitality to redirect internal resources from break-fix tasks to more strategic initiatives that drive operational efficiency and, ultimately, business growth. Hughes delivers the expertise and operational capacity needed to maintain a healthy, high-performing environment across all locations, with swift responses to issues and requests.
The rollout to Manna’s stores exceeded expectations in both speed and quality. Professional technicians resolved onsite issues quickly, and clear, proactive communication kept stakeholders informed throughout the transition. The deployment occurred with a level of coordination and execution that surpassed Manna’s previous provider experiences.
Hughes has significantly reduced Manna’s operational burden while elevating support quality. Manna’s IT team retains portal access for real-time self-monitoring, and Hughes provides support for escalations and complex issues. Direct access to Hughes engineers eliminates the frustration of multi-layered support routing and accelerates resolution times.
The HughesON portal delivers real-time visibility into network health across all locations. Manna’s IT team can see network status, diagnose and troubleshoot issues, and reboot devices remotely, all without store-level intervention. Remote power monitoring with automated cycling further reduces mean time to resolution, preventing costly disruptions before they impact operations. This feature, configured with customer input and user- preferred settings, will be fully enabled once the rollout is complete.
Billing management is now handled by Hughes, enabling Manna’s internal staff to reclaim even more time. By moving troubleshooting, billing, and vendor coordination to Hughes, Manna’s team can focus on higher-value initiatives, such as development, automation, and strategic project management that directly support business objectives.
The partnership has transformed the in-store experience for both employees and customers. Guests enjoy fast, reliable Wi-Fi access, and POS transactions occur quickly thanks to stable and robust connectivity. Manna Hospitality anticipates faster store openings and fewer disruptions as they grow with a reliable MSP partner providing expert support and guidance.
Hughes Technology
The Hughes technology and services deployed for Manna Hospitality include:
- Access to the HughesON portal provides real-time visibility into network status and issues across all locations, and allows IT to remotely monitor sites, troubleshoot, and open tickets.
- Extensive Fortinet engineering expertise, including design/build support across the entire network architecture.
- Innovative hardware solutions and connectivity services selected or custom-developed to work universally across diverse store environments.
- Active Power Edge Managed Power Distribution Units automatically power-cycle devices when connectivity issues are detected. Active remote power monitoring and remediation capability resolves many common issues without human intervention, reduces tickets, and accelerates mean time to resolution.
- Managed services, spanning networking and installation, proactive monitoring, fast remediation, vendor coordination, and billing management, plus technical support personnel when needed.
Round-the-clock 24/7 support and a nationwide team of field technicians with access to equipment for rapid response.
Learn more about Hughes Managed Network Services.