New software introduced on the retail service desk to help effectively manage diverse retail distribution operations

Retail distributor James Hall has announced that it has purchased service management software Sostenuto from Sunrise Software.

The company supplies Spar stores in the North of England. Its one-stop-shop service spans a wide spectrum from product supply to store engineering, properties management, accounts and marketing services for the 450 franchises. 

Retail IT customer service manager Julie Atkinson’s team provides IT support for internal users, as well as a service to the stores, managing their queries relating to IT, products and price.

“Our role is to help the stores get the best out of their business,” says Julie. “Queries from ‘My scanner is not working’ to ‘This Mars bar won’t scan’.”

Managing business and IT issues

“As part of the procurement process, we looked at three different software companies. Sunrise clearly had the strongest track record of providing service management solutions for business applications, not just the IT function.

“Functionality-wise, it ticked our boxes for first-class reporting and incident management,” she added. “We foresee Sostenuto helping our business become more streamlined, by supporting processes which will minimise human error. Its reporting capabilities will give us the means to identify customers and stores which place the highest demand on the desk and make them more accountable.”

Previously, the service desk was using a DOS system. But, Atkinson said: “Reports took the felling of a small rainforest to produce.” The system did not provide the statistics needed to identify and correct human errors, so the ease of use of the reporting tools in Sostenuto played a big part in the decision to adopt it.

“I can just see Sostenuto growing and touching all parts of the business in future,” Atkinson added.