IT lifecycle services expert Smart CT has won a contract with technology giant Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions to provide maintenance and support for 32 of the UK’s big high street retailers.
The three-year-deal gives the Reading company a significant foothold in the retail market, said CEO Andy Morgan. It will be providing maintenance and support for retailers across a range of areas, including supermarkets, fast food, sport, charity and clothing.
The fast-growing company provides services to deploy, maintain, replace and repair business-critical IT infrastructure on behalf of IT manufacturers who support an extensive range of organisations – from household brands to industrial businesses – in need of connected devices including networking, servers and other workplace technologies.
The contract is to maintain and repair thousands of retail point of sale systems, printers, scanners and headsets for Toshiba, with around 10,000 callouts a year expected for Smart CT’s network of 65 UK-wide engineers. The network of engineers was recently bolstered by an additional 20 engineers being taken on from the manufacturer.
“This is a significant deal for us because although we already provide a substantial amount of retail services for customers across Europe, this gives us a greater level of scale,” said Mr Morgan.
“Around 10,000 service requests is a big number but it demonstrates our ability as an organisation to support multiple technologies at scale – networking, service storage and workplace technologies, which includes retail. This contract gives us a really solid footprint in the retail space.”
He said the contract was won in the face of some stiff competition. “We were up against some big companies but we are already working with this company on a material networking contract so they are aware of how reliable we are and the excellent service we provide,” he said.
Smart CT also recently won a three-year contract to support retail intelligence company MRI Software with device installation and maintenance at a nationwide health food chain and a fragrance retailer across the UK and Europe.
Mr Morgan said the latest win is a testament to the company’s reputation for reliability. “We’re known for networking and server storage reliability but this proves that we’re also becoming recognised for retail,” he said.
“For all of these retailers, having tills open is absolutely crucial to their business but if there is a break or a need for maintenance we will have the part shipped to the store and our engineers will be there within four hours, eight hours or the next business day to ensure continuity.”
The increase in retail presence has been part of the company’s growth strategy. “This is the retail push that we have planned for and having such a significant number of customers puts us in a strong position to win more,” said Mr Morgan.
“We have the resources and the capability to continue scaling. While this recent win is in retail, our business is well established across multiple industries, providing deployment and maintenance services for critical IT infrastructure and providing a fast and reliable service at scale.