Phoenix takes a Welcome Break

VAR bags managed services contract with motorway services giant

Northampton-based VAR Phoenix has secured a significant managed services contract with service station chain Welcome Break to maintain its IT systems.

Welcome Break, which operates 265 branded business units across 27 sites, needed a provider that could offer a high-performance IT service, guaranteeing resilience, availability and quality of service.

Under the terms of the deal, which was for an undisclosed sum, Phoenix will offer a range of services including break/fix maintenance for servers; EPoS tills and PCs for 265 business units across 28 locations including the head office and four standalone hotel sites; network monitoring; management and operations; and project installation work including moves and changes.

David Willock, IT director at Welcome Break, said the relationship with Phoenix was a strong one.

“IT service provision is essential to running our day-to-day business,” he said. “IT underpins many of our processes, most notably from a customer perspective: serving people quickly and accurately 24/7. The EPoS system is a key part of that customer interaction, so it has to be as reliable as possible.”

“From a service standpoint, there are at least 140 opportunities each month for things to go wrong,” Willock explained. “And this is an emotive area, especially when you are dealing with tills going down at peak times. So it is important that the service from Phoenix is good; this is a very significant service for Welcome Break, and it works well. It’s a strong relationship.”

He added that the work was something Welcome Break could not do in-house: “There are some areas in IT where it makes sense to outsource to an expert provider, such as Phoenix, that offers specialised services and has the economies of scale to deliver better, more efficiently and cost-effectively than we could in-house,” he said.

“Of course, Welcome Break maintains overall management responsibility. But fixing 140 hardware problems across all sites every month? We couldn’t do that, not in an efficient and cost-effective way.”