Crackerjack

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Managed services for a retailer that's all about value

About Crackerjack

Crackerjack is a nationwide retail business with 12 stores across New Zealand and one central online store. The team at Crackerjack are in the business of finding bargains and are passionate about saving their customers money. They use a combination of negotiation skills and their entrepreneurial kiwi spirit to source a wide range of products spanning fast moving consumer goods, clothing and merchandise spanning household, manchester, gardening, and pets.

We provide Crackerjack with managed services support across all of their IT infrastructure.

Crackerjack
"IT is the lifeblood of our business and without it we can’t operate. System access is essential for trading, both in store and online, and the integrity of our data is vital. We’re fortunate to have a great IT partner in Lancom Technology."
Patrick Stevenson / Chief Finance Officer

The challenge

Strengthen the infrastructure

When we first started working with Crackerjack, our team and the client identified the need to fix some underlying issues with the IT infrastructure. Specifically, we needed to address ageing equipment and some areas of the security profile. If left unchecked these issues could over time, create unnecessary risk capable of disrupting trading for the client.

Provide a partnership to support growth

The client is ambitious and has a growing business. At the same time, they want a managed services provider capable of forming a true partnership. Someone they can rely on to optimise them for future success and who can provide plenty of value add, whilst also putting in place solutions that will scale with their business and support future growth.

The solution

True partnership

Culturally there’s a good fit between Lancom Technology and Crackerjack. We’re both ambitious, growing, New Zealand businesses and we “get” one another. Our customer success team meet regularly with the team at Crackerjack and the partnership is anything but transactional.

Upskill the team

We pride ourselves on being more than an ambulance at a bottom of a cliff, picking up the pieces when things go wrong. We love it when we can give clients a leg up by helping them make better use of their IT systems. Our approach has involved upskilling the Crackerjack team by providing knowledge and expertise but also new tools and ways of working. An example of this is spending time with the Crackerjack operations team, helping them make better use of the Microsoft Power Platform.

Transparency

The team at Crackerjack can log support tickets via their Lancom Button. This is a specialist app deployed to each user’s machine which provides complete transparency over support tickets and timelines, and it enables users to chat in real time to our engineers. Tickets can even be fast tracked and actioned promptly in recognition of the client’s priorities.

Expert support

We’ve also introduced Crackerjack to our expert partners who are able to help them realise significant upsides. For instance, our partner Kordia, are expert at wide area networks (WANs) and have been able to provide Crackerjack with cheaper calling rates and better network security.

The results

Smooth transition to lockdown

Retail operations all around the world have been hit hard by COVID-19 with forced store closures commonplace. With New Zealand going through multiple lockdowns, Crackerjack has been able to transition their IT to remote working, and back again, seamlessly.

Great service

For Crackerjack, a key measure of success is the speed in which issues are identified and addressed. Our partnership is built on mutual respect where both parties recognise it’s inevitable that in the world of IT, things will break at times. When this happens, we work together to resolve the problem quickly, taking responsibility for the issue and fixing things so they don’t occur again.

Value add

With a client in the business of finding bargains, it’s no surprise that providing plenty of value add is important. Upskilling the team, introducing expert partners and taking a proactive approach to IT means we’re able to deliver plenty of additional value. We’re not just consolidating the IT infrastructure for Crackerjack, we’re helping build a roadmap to support future success.

Services used

MANAGED SERIVCES

  • IT Managed Services

  • IT Procurement

  • IT security

  • Microsoft Office 365

  • Virtual CIO

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