HARVEYS:

BEATING THE CHRISTMAS RUSH

The Homestyle Group has enjoyed a leading position in the retail market since the early Nineties, with over 440 stores throughout the United Kingdom, including Bensons for Beds and Harveys: The Furniture Store, amongst others. Harveys is one of the leading names in high street furniture retailing and has approximately 160 stores in the UK with their IT being managed from their data centre in Rainham, Essex. Additionally, Harveys supplied processing power at that data centre for other companies in the Group, notably Bensons for Beds.

THE CHALLENGE

In the ever-competitive retail market, Harveys wanted to be in a position where they could accurately predict their monthly costs but retain the ability to make changes where necessary in response to their business needs, giving the other companies in the Group access to Service Level Agreements they could rely on.

In addition to the technical complexity of this project, there was a timescale constraint - everything had to be ready by 1st December, in time for the traditional Christmas rush followed by the January sales.

THE SOLUTION

ACS helped Harveys meet the Christmas deadline easily and now deliver a fully outsourced, managed service including first line helpdesk support for their retail staff on the shop floor, all managed through the ACS Service Desk.

“This is a huge step-change for us,” said Danny Flynn, Systems Manager of Harveys. “We are now able to offer our internal customers a best-of-breed service for their systems which, in turn, benefits our retail customers.”

“We chose ACS for several reasons,” he continues. “They have a flexible, responsive approach to their work, they are dedicated to getting the job done and culturally are an excellent fit with our organisation.”