“Before we started working with the IT team, we ran everything from head office in Christchurch, so if the power went out down here or we had any kind of data outage, like someone cutting through a cable, that meant all our stores nationwide were affected.”
“We went to market to find a supplier who could not only provide us with the level of support we needed, 7 days a week, but who could also transition us away from that level of risk to our business.”
Blair Kershaw
Finance and admin manager
The Business
New Zealand retailer nood is known for its quality homewares and replica designer items, available through 14 stores nationwide and their online store.
nood stores can be found in Christchurch, Queenstown, Dunedin, Nelson, Wellington, Hamilton, Tauranga and Auckland, with multiple branches in some centres, including two outlet stores. Head Office is located in Christchurch.
The I.T. team has been working with nood since 2013, providing nationwide support for the full range of IT services required to keep this high profile business running and expanding.
Details
Location: Nationwide
Sector: Retail
Users/Seats: 20-50
Services provided: Managed Services, Office 365, Datacentre Services, Internet and VOIP (telephony)
The Challenges
The company had an internal IT department that worked with an external supplier, and ran all its servers inhouse.
They then transitioned to another external supplier who proved to be too small to handle the company’s requirements, particularly in terms of providing support over the weekends which of course is the busiest time of the week for retailers.
Prior to working with the I.T. team, nood ran everything from servers and systems at head office in Christchurch, so if the power went out or there was any kind of data outage, that meant all nood stores nationwide were affected.
Mitigating Business Risk
nood wanted an IT company who could not only provide the level of support the business needed, 7 days a week, but who could also transition away from that level of risk to their business.
The retail chain used to have inhouse server backup tapes collected by a security company each night, until they needed to use a backup on one occasion and found the tapes were blank. Now there is no risk of that sort of thing happening, with all data being backed up to the cloud.
A recent Microsoft Audit was also passed with flying colours due to the fact that all software and systems are now cloud hosted via Office 365.
The Solution:
nood is on a Managed Services contract with the I.T. team and has all its data hosted online. The IT team also manages all the telephone systems for nood nationwide, utilising VOIP over fibre to help reduce costs and make it easy to manage centrally.
Finance and admin manager Blair Kershaw says “The experience of working with the IT team has been a good one that has saved the company significant dollars and provided the security of a system that is largely futureproofed”.
Compared to previous suppliers, he says the I.T. team’s service has been a definite step up.
“One of the things we like with the IT team is that we know (and they know) it’s in their best interests to maintain our infrastructure well and avoid getting lots of calls from us. We have a single point of contact so that our branches are not constantly calling for help with small things they can sort out for themselves – calls come to me first then if necessary I can escalate them to the I.T. team.”
nood continues to expand, with a new store opening in Queenstown recently, and relies on the IT team to send staff wherever they are required to assist with the setup of networks.
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