The Warehouse is one of New Zealand’s largest retail chains and, as the business grows, its IT systems management becomes increasingly complex.

Service support manager Stephen Mullins says Telecom’s eTXT text service is alerting technicians to IT issues as they occur and is keeping senior managers informed of progress more effectively than was previously possible.

Maintaining knowledge
“As The Warehouse’s operation has grown, we’ve become more sophisticated in the way we preserve and access our institutional knowledge," says Mullins.

“For example, we maintain a data warehouse that stores several years of historical sales data. With this information, we can analyse sales trends over extended periods and thereby predict likely sales, distributing stock around our retail outlets more effectively.

Around 400 staff have direct access to this database via their desktops and the company also produces regular sales updates and predictions for its stores.

“Monitoring and responding to IT issues with any one of the six servers on which the database is hosted is a major responsibility for our IT team. And once a problem has been noted and our technicians have gone to work, we need to keep a number of senior IT managers informed of the issue and its resolution."

As a seven-days-a-week retailer, The Warehouse doesn’t have much tolerance for IT service disruption, says Mullins.  "We need effective communications to keep our infrastructure running smoothly. 

Real-time communications
Telecom has provided The Warehouse with eTXT, which alerts its IT department to server issues as they occur and provides progress reports to relevant staff.

“Any time one of the servers develops a problem, it’s automatically logged and reported direct to one of our technician’s mobile phones as a text message. This means they’re aware of the problem immediately and can get on with fixing the fault as soon as possible.

“Once we’re aware of the issue, we also use eTXT to keep key IT managers informed of progress in addressing the fault. We have set up a distribution group of the people who need to be aware of these issues and, as we receive progress reports, we send single emails to members of this group who each receive the information on their mobile."

Streamlining responses
Mullins says eTXT has made his department far more responsive to many IT issues including those relating to its data warehouse.

“Our technicians know about outages as they happen, meaning they’re on the job almost immediately. Ultimately this means the problem is solved faster, with less disruption for our staff.

“And it lets us keep people in the loop with consistent information about when the system will be up and running again. Instead of wasting time ringing everybody individually, we can send identical information to a wide range of people with one email."

One of the things Mullins likes most about eTXT is its simplicity.

"If you’ve got email and you’ve got a mobile phone, you’re pretty much ready to go. Telecom took care of the back-end software, the issue alerts take care of themselves and all we need to do to keep managers informed is to type a single email.

“Best of all, eTXT means our technicians and managers don’t have to be deskbound to keep on top of IT issues. They receive information instantly wherever they are.

“It’s taking some of the headaches out of IT issues management.”

For more information
Telecom New Zealand
www.telecom.co.nz

February 2006