30 January 2014

NextiraOne is providing a variety of managed services for Poundland’s Cisco-based network infrastructure.

Poundland has almost 500 stores across the UK and is said to serve more than 4.5 million customers every week. The company’s core network is essential to its day-to-day operations. It handles everything from financial and staff management systems to the integration of sales and stock information with a round the clock warehousing operation that despatches more than 800 million items every year.

IT director Mike Gray says: “Our business is highly reliant on IT – for orders, stock control, transport and logistics and warehousing. IT resilience is critical as unplanned downtime can quickly damage our business.” As a result, he says that Poundland has now put in place proactive and preventative service measures to minimise business impact and ensure a stable platform for its ongoing growth.

Poundland has worked with NextiraOne since 2004, and under a multi-year agreement, the systems integrator is now providing a variety of managed services for the retailer’s Cisco-based network infrastructure. This includes the data centre, voice communications and LAN infrastructure across its HQ, together with its two regional distribution centres and nationwide estate of stores.

NextiraOne says it designed its managed services to be “flexible but comprehensive” in order to support and enhance Poundland’s operations efficiently and cost-effectively. Under the agreement, it is providing 24/7 break-fix support as well as performance monitoring, optimisation, and flexible additional on-demand services. The firm says the latter provides additional resource to supplement Poundland’s in-house IT team during trading peaks and unforeseen circumstances, thus “streamlining” the outsourcing process.

NextiraOne adds that the managed services provide Poundland’s team with a single overview of its entire IT estate. This allows it 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.

Mark Petty, NextiraOne’s managed services director, says: “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.”