07 June 2005
LOGICALIS' MANAGED SERVICES ENABLES RETAILERS TO OPTIMISE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY AND IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Next-Generation Managed Services for Retail Continually Aligns Infrastructure with Evolving Business Strategies
Logicalis today announced the launch of next-generation Managed Services for Retail. The offering will enable retailers to better align their technology infrastructure with their business strategy - both immediately improving the operational efficiency of their entire current information technology (IT) and communications infrastructure and also increasing the speed by which they are able to institute future changes in areas such as supply chain and HR in order to succeed in the highly competitive retail environment.
Logicalis Managed Services enables this by managing evolving service levels against the support of specific business processes and objectives, rather than simply guaranteeing the availability of IT and communications infrastructure and services. A single, flexible Business Level Agreement (BLA) that evolves continuously with the retailer's organisation supports this secure and holistic management of the entire infrastructure.
The announcement comes as many retailers enter a period of major technology refresh – for instance up to 40 per cent of current POS terminals still use the over-twenty-years-old DOS operating system. They are taking advantage of the outsourcing model as a way to gain speed and competitive advantage, in a market that is in a constant state of flux, and where pressure to increase revenues is tempered by rapid changes in technology, processes and consumer spending habits.
Unable to take advantage of new innovations
In recent years to attract and retain customers, retailers have increased the number of touch points available - including Point of Sale (POS) services, kiosks, web sites and wireless services – and pursued complex multi-channel retail and CRM strategies. Despite significant investment in technology to support these strategies, many retailers find themselves with legacy systems that span multiple platforms and with overlapping capacity yet unable to fully take advantage of these new innovations.
This situation is impeding retailers' ability to improve overall operational efficiency and seamless customer service, and their ability in future to remain competitive by harnessing the latest technologies in the supply chain and customer interaction, including: Global Data Synchronisation (GDS); Radio Frequency Identification (RFID); electronic shelf labels and wireless POS.
Commercial and operational benefits
Logicalis Managed Services are supported through a four layer model integrating the management of devices, infrastructure, service and business levels.
According to Ian Cook, Logicalis CEO of European Operations, "Logicalis Managed Services have profound commercial benefits for retail customers. These include the ability to transfer risk and the opportunity to take advantage of a flexible utility service supply model with pricing linked to business volumes. This simplifies budgeting by delivering predictable costs and includes subscription pricing or a monthly recurring charge and can be supported by a portfolio of financial services options. In addition, business efficiency is underpinned by technology investment profiling to ensure that infrastructure spend is always delivering maximum benefit."
"The operational benefits for retailers are also compelling, based as they are on a single source solution providing one point of contact and liability," he continues. "Customers can benefit from end-to-end lifecycle services covering: planning; design; implementation; support; management and optimisation with industry certified people and processes managing state-of-the art multi-vendor, multi-technology facilities."
Single point of contact
In doing so, Logicalis provides a single point of contact through its new purpose-built Managed Service Centre (MSC), to monitor and manage dynamic requirements and relationships with multiple service providers. This ensures that the infrastructure is always optimised to deliver real commercial value and that performance can be managed against retail business objectives.
"By managing the network between our headquarters and 550+ local stores, Logicalis are ensuring we get optimum utilisation and availability of service across our wide area network. Their reliability and responsiveness, which is absolutely critical to our business, has been excellent. Logicalis continue to deliver high levels of service, even though we continually increase our demand on the network for more transactions, as a result of adding store kiosks, call forward systems, and enhancing our stock finder applications." said Steve Berry, Infrastructure Systems Manager, Argos.
Recognising that there is a huge chasm between those retail organisations who wish to retain ownership of their assets, and those who want to outsource their network and relevant personnel, Logicalis Managed Services provides solutions for both. In either situation, Logicalis monitors and manages the entire IT and communications infrastructure – including networks, servers, enterprise applications, security devices and the desktop – from a centralised, network and systems management platform.
The management information, critical for supervising the retail customer's information and communications estate, is all available on-line through a bespoke Customer Service portal, providing access to real-time network information, historical SLA reports, billing, on-line fault reporting and order status.
"Traditional managed services contracts are no longer enough to meet the needs of modern retailers," emphasises Cook. "That is why our managed service offering is based on the highly flexible BLA: business objectives, strategy, management style and culture can all influence service requirements, and all are subject to change at short notice. Our next generation services are designed to embrace this constant change as a core requirement."
Logicalis Managed Services are based on deep levels of professional expertise boasting a significant and diverse level of understanding of end-to-end information flows and expertise in enterprise computing, fixed and mobile network management, storage, and services. According to the company, this is unlikely to be found in any single enterprise but is critical to understand network events in context.
Three levels of service
In keeping with its flexible model, Logicalis offers three turnkey plans: Assured, Enhanced and Advanced, but will provide bespoke service levels based on a modular portfolio of services.
The quality of the Logicalis service is underpinned by Logicalis having achieved independent triple certification for all its operations including an integrated management system supporting computing and communications solutions, information security and IT service management offerings: ISO 9001/2000; ISO 27001 and ISO 20000 respectively. Clients are increasingly demanding these standards as a core requirement for doing business and Logicalis is one of the few companies in the UK able to support quality, information security and IT service management credentials – backed by independent certification from BSI, a leading UKAS accredited organisation.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of high-performance IT integration solutions. The Logicalis Group employs 800 people worldwide, including highly-trained service specialists who specify, design, deploy and manage IT infrastructure to meet the needs of over 5,000 corporate and public sector customers. Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders such as IBM, HP and Cisco.
In addition, Logicalis in the UK has achieved independent triple certification for its integrated management system, information security and IT service management offerings: ISO 9001/2000; ISO 27001 and ISO 20000 respectively.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, a $2.5 billion business listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. With its international headquarters in the UK, Logicalis' global revenue is approaching $500 million from operations in the U.S., UK, Germany, and South America. For more information, visit www.uk.logicalis.com.
For further information contact
Charlotte Sandy or Barrie Desmond
Tel: 01291 626200
charlottes@cohesive.uk.com
barried@cohesive.uk.com