Melbourne IT Support Case Study – Gazman

Remote management of IT systems and networks improves performance and lowers costs

"Our IT costs as a percentage of sales have decreased every year for the last five years since working with LANserve, while we have experienced significant growth in the business. As our business continues to grow, the costs of running IT are not."

Paul Ansons, General Manager

Background

Gazman is one of Australia's leading menswear wholesalers and retailers. They opened their first retail outlet in 1991 and today operate a chain of 35 stores around Australia with an off-site head office and warehouse. While expanding the retail arm of the business, the wholesale arm has also grown extensively with clients like Myer and David Jones.

The Problem

As an expanding business, additonal demands were being placed on existing IT infrastructure responsible for managing procurement, human resources, inventory management and point-of-sale operations. Gazman General Manager, Paul Ansons, concedes that the lack of a strategic approach to IT started to become a distraction to the growth of the business:

"Our IT systems were diverse and we never really knew whether they would be up and running at any particular time. Subsequently, we were spending way too much money on bringing in specialist service providers to negotiate their way around the issues and keep our infrastructure limping along...

There was no strategic plan, we were just reacting to the latest issues and patching over them without ever getting to the root cause of the problems."

Desired outcomes

To improve IT management and allow Gazman to focus on the growth of the business
To reduce costs brought about by the need for frequent "emergency repairs" as opposed to lower cost preventative measures.
To ensure higher uptime to ensure no interruptions to sales and business flow
To free up internal IT staff to focus on strategic issues rather than day-to-day systems management

Solution

Implement LANserve, Emerging IT’s remote network management system to allow for remote repairs of servers and desktops, security/virus auditing, patch management, access to qualified engineers and a specialised help desk solution
Introduce backup and off-site redundancy systems to ensure seamless business continuity no matter what happens
Plan IT upgrades and modifications strategically to ensure they meet the short and long term goals of the business

Paul Ansons adds,
"With LANserve, Emerging IT has provided us with a standard operating environment for servers and desktops which is remotely monitored and maintained.

"They have helped us to plan strategically for improved IT performance as well as implementing back-up and disaster recovery solutions. As part of the LANserve agreement, we also take advantage of a hardware replacement service so if we have a failure somewhere within our hardware infrastructure, we have a back-up ready to go on the same day."

Results

Lower total cost of ownership for IT hardware and operating systems
Significantly reduced running costs due to better IT management
Controlled, consistent IT overheads for more accurate budgeting
Enhanced availability for internal IT staff resulting in better performance of internal IT procedures and projects
Reduced data management risk including no loss of important sales data, orders or customer records

"We have transformed ourselves from a reactive IT management culture to one that is proactive," Mr. Ansons said. "We are no longer continually chasing errors and can now get on with concentrating on what we do best."