UK supplier of tailored menswear invests in third-party maintenance services to save up to 20% when compared to vendor-direct support
UK supplier of tailored menswear invests in third-party maintenance services to save up to 20% when compared to vendor-direct support
Charles Tyrwhitt, the UK menswear retailer, has saved up to 20% when compared to vendor-direct maintenance services over the past decade.
It employed IT services and solutions provider Maindec in 2000 to deliver hardware maintenance and support for its business-critical server infrastructure, which is vital to the smooth running of the company’s multichannel business. Maindec’s engineering expertise has helped shape a robust IT infrastructure, which supports high levels of customer satisfaction.
As well as formal and casual men’s clothing, Charles Tyrwhitt sells a range of fashion accessories and women’s shirts in all UK-based retail stores, as well as in New York and Paris.
Maindec started working with Charles Tyrwhitt when the business required a single IT service to support its growing hardware infrastructure. Maindec was chosen for the locality of its engineering offices and inherent flexibility, as well as a consistent track record for responding to break/fix queries within contracted service level agreement (SLA) timeframes.
The seven nationwide Maindec offices enable the engineering team to meet customer’s requirements on a 24-hours-a-day basis, eliminating the business risk typically associated with lengthy server downtime. Thomas Brooke, IT manager at Charles Tyrwhitt, explained: “This support is critical to Charles Tyrwhitt because if we were to experience down time, we’d start losing money.”
Single source of support
The longstanding contract with Maindec includes the third-party maintenance of hardware purchased from a number of different vendors, acting as a single source of support for Charles Tyrwhitt. Brooke commented: “We saw the cost-saving benefits of engaging with a third-party support provider like Maindec, who has expertise across a number of hardware brands, rather than contracting out to multiple specialists once a product is out of vendor support. It works out much cheaper and Charles Tyrwhitt is seeing a 10-20% saving.”
Maindec provides Charles Tyrwhitt with maintenance and support across all the UK outlets’ server infrastructure, the entire printer estate and the majority of the company’s network infrastructure.
Brooke highlighted some additional benefits of the contract, “Maindec is structured in such a way that regional operations are committed to respective territories; and as such, we get the same engineers servicing our servers consistently. Consequently, we have built up very strong relationships with these engineers, resulting in them gaining unparalleled familiarity with our servers and network, as well as our business requirements in general.”
Maindec also maintains a comprehensive stock of ‘warm’ spares, facilitating a quick and efficient reaction to logged queries. Brooke continued: “Without Maindec’s commitment to holding a considerable number of system spares a number of vendor products, we would be burdened not only with procuring the appropriate spare parts, but also with on-site storage. Maindec’s engineers have such a high level of expertise and we know and trust that we’ll get the very best recommendation from them, whatever the problem.”
Flexing to meet demand
Coupled with this, Maindec’s flexibility enables the IT team at Charles Tyrwhitt to focus on day-to-day priorities. Brooke added: “Over the years, the amount of servers that make up our IT infrastructure has fluctuated, but Maindec has always been flexible. For example, if we buy a new server that is not listed on our service contract, Maindec are very easy-going about simply adding the details onto the contract, and getting on with supporting our new requirements.”
Installing IT hardware and business-critical servers is a crucial investment for a company like Charles Tyrwhitt, as the 24-hour online shopping service accounts for 50% of the company’s sales revenue. Shopping experiences continue to evolve with the growth of technology, therefore to have dependable hardware in place along with a superior maintenance and support arrangement is vital to the successful running of Charles Tyrwhitt.
Brooke concluded: “The best thing about the relationship we have with Maindec is that they intimately know our network system and the problems we have with various servers. This is so crucial. It is essential that our website constantly runs smoothly, because if the online shopping service experiences any downtime, ultimately the business will lose money. Maindec offers high-level and trustworthy specialist IT support, delivering cost-effective lifetime value. For this reason Maindec will continue to be a valued and trusted support partner.”
