STUDY: Weird Fish finds new IT is perfect fit
Managed services provision helps UK clothing brand expand business and grow e-commerce channel sales by upgrading and supporting existing systems
UK clothing brand Weird Fish decided to expand its e-commerce business so needed to upgrade its Microsoft Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning (ERP) software platform.
With no dedicated in-house IT
support, the business was looking for a one-stop-shop to manage its Dynamics AX
application and enlisted K3 Retail to perform the upgrade and K3 Managed
Services for ongoing IT support and maintenance.
Weird Fish has 12 retail UK stores
and sells its products wholesale through larger retail chains and independent
stores. IT is critical to the smooth running of its diverse retail channels and
the company had already implemented Dynamics AX 2009 to help manage all its
financial data and to produce management reports for its accounts and stock
levels and for supporting its e-commerce business.
But the company was also
looking for AX sector-specific expertise to ensure that Weird Fish used its ERP
software to its full potential, to support its rapid growth and development.
Business management
essentials
“Eighty
per cent of our business is wholesale but we can see an emerging market in
e-commerce,” said Jon Goodwin, Weird Fish financial controller. “Dynamics AX
software is, therefore, essential for us to manage our purchase orders,
receipts, stock information, sales orders and financial data.
“With
so much information going through the software, it is important that we have a
specialist company taking care of all our systems so we can concentrate on
moving our business forward. K3 Managed Services keeps this data safe and is
able to restore it should anything go wrong.”
As
part of its IT provision, Weird Fish wanted a single telephone number to call
in case it had problems. With Dynamics AX supplied and supported by K3 Retail
and its managed services division, the company benefitted from a having one
source for its AX support and problem resolution.
Benefitting from the latest
software
The managed services and retail divisions of K3 worked together to
upgrade Weird Fish to the latest Dynamics AX 2012 R2 version. This included
installing two brand new servers onto Weird Fish’s existing IT network. K3
Managed Services also deployed virtualisation technology to reduce the costs
affiliated with running Dynamics AX on premise. This meant that, instead of
installing hardware onsite, Weird Fish was able to access a virtual platform,
which includes Microsoft Windows operating systems (OS), Microsoft SQL
Databases, storage and network resources.
As part of the transition
from Dynamics AX 2009 to the latest software, K3 Managed Services also
performed an audit of Weird Fish’s
existing IT network to ensure that all the company’s licences were, and will remain, up-to-date.
Goodwin added: “Software licensing is not always something that is top of
our business agenda because we do not have an internal IT team. The fact that
K3 Managed Services now looks after all our IT licensing is a huge weight off
our minds and means that we are never using unlicensed software.”
Hardware and software support
K3 Managed Services now provides
support for Weird Fish’s entire IT network and its
40-user based Dynamics AX software. It is also responsible for the up-keep of
Weird Fish’s hardware, Windows OS,
Microsoft architecture, SQL databases, email and antivirus software.
The retailer also benefits from the provider’s Sentinel Support Service, which provides a remote pro-active monitoring service from its Network Operations Centre in Hook, Hampshire. This monitoring service is deployed onto the Weird Fish IT network to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time.
It
scans for disk errors, memory usage and potential problems, seeking them out
before they become major issues. If it does detect a potential problem,
Sentinel alerts the helpdesk where a member of the K3 Managed Services team is
available to help. This ensures that Weird Fish always has a safe backup for
its IT and sensitive data.
“A
key differentiator of the support that we receive from K3 Managed Services is
the onsite engineer support. They make an effort to come on site when they can
and really make an effort to inform us of any problems that do occur so we
understand fully how everything is operating. We always have the same engineers
visit us too, so we know just who to call on should we have a problem whether
it is general or something more specific like a Firewall issue,” added Goodwin.
Maintaining business as usual
K3 Managed Services also
provides Weird Fish with break/fix support, giving the company unlimited parts
and labour support for all hardware issues. This covers everything from
hardware replacements to complete server rebuilds.
“By
having all of our IT support and provision from the same company we don’t have to worry about our IT and can get on with our
business. Dynamics AX is going to be an integral part of our move into
e-commerce, and knowing K3 Managed Services will ensure all of our IT is
running smoothly without any glitches gives us confidence that we are heading
in the right direction for our business,”Goodwin concluded.
