NextiraOne provides comprehensive IT and network support from simple break-fix to on-demand resourcing as Poundland’s trusted long term partner

Lichfield, 19 September 2013 – NextiraOne, Europe’s leading expert in communications services, is providing a comprehensive Managed Services agreement for Poundland, Europe’s biggest single-price discount retailer. Under a multi-year agreement, NextiraOne will provide everything from break-fix to on-demand services for Poundland’s Cisco-based network infrastructure. This includes the company’s Data Centre, voice communications and LAN infrastructure across its HQ, together with its two regional Distribution Centres and a nationwide estate of almost 500 stores.

The Managed Services agreement will ensure that Poundland’s IT team can concentrate on running the efficient systems that keep it at the peak of the value retail sector. Poundland is a major high street retailer and serves over 4.5 million customers every week with a range of over 3,000 products across 17 shopping categories including food and drink, health and beauty, household, toys and over 1,000 top brands. The company’s core network is essential to its day-to-day operations, handling everything from financial and staff management systems to the integration of sales and stock information with a 24/7 warehousing operation that despatches over 800 million items every year to the company’s retail outlets.
 
A trusted partner for the last nine years, NextiraOne has designed its Managed Services to be flexible but comprehensive in order to support and enhance Poundland’s operations efficiently and cost-effectively. As a major retailer of consumer goods, Poundland relies heavily on its IT and communications and NextiraOne helps to underpin and ensure the continuity of critical IT and networking operations with its end-to-end Managed Services. These begin with 24/7/365 break-fix support and include performance monitoring, optimisation and flexible additional on-demand services for trading peaks and unforeseen circumstances.

Mark Petty, NextiraOne’s Managed Services Director, said: “By combining technical and operational support with performance monitoring and network optimisation, plus additional on-demand resources, Poundland has the best of all worlds - cost-effective and highly efficient services. We designed the service to be flexible and scalable, so that as the Poundland business grows and new stores or sites are added, the company has sufficient data to understand the infrastructure investments required.”

NextiraOne’s on-demand services provide additional resource to supplement Poundland’s in-house IT team for peak times in their workload, thus streamlining the outsourcing process. The flexibility available by using these Smart Tasking services allows Poundland to take advantage of NextiraOne’s highly skilled, fully accredited resources when it needs them most.

“Our business is highly reliant on IT – for orders, stock control, transport & logistics and warehousing. IT resilience is critical as unplanned downtime can quickly damage our business,” explains Mike Gray, IT Director at Poundland. “By putting in place proactive and preventative service measures, we can minimise business impact and ensure a stable platform for our ongoing growth.”

NextiraOne’s Managed Services provide Poundland’s IT team with a single overview of its entire IT estate. This management information allows the team to make informed business decisions and take pre-emptive action before issues that could impact the business develop, thus avoiding costly downtime and associated loss of productivity.

Steven Skakel, Managing Director UK & Ireland at NextiraOne, commented: “We have worked with Poundland for many years and the comprehensive support of our Managed Services portfolio is the next logical step in our partnership. We understand Poundland’s business model, so we can deliver exceptional services that add value to the company’s performance and help it to achieve its desired business outcomes. We are delighted that Poundland has chosen to continue our long-standing relationship, as testament to their desire to work with a partner they know, like and trust.”

Further information is available in a case study, which can be viewed here: http://www.nextiraone.eu/uk/references/poundland/poundland