Financier consolidates maintenance services

For Toyota Financial Services, one of Australia’s leading financiers, its IT systems are critical. Therefore, Toyota Financial Services decided to source a hardware maintenance provider to maintain the robustness of its IT systems, guaranteeing parts availability and a quick service response.

Enter Interactive. By consolidating its hardware maintenance services with the Australian systems availability specialist, Toyota Financial Services is now enjoying an increase in its IT systems’ availability, leading to a reduction in both business downtime and operating costs.

“We had found dealing with different vendors for each of our various operating systems was not only increasing our operating costs but, when the vendors were unable to source parts for some older systems, we were experiencing significant delays, which was impacting the efficiency of our business,” explains Mark Gosling, Information Services Manager of Toyota Financial Services.

With its offices located in Sydney, Melbourne, Woolaware Bay, Townsville, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, Toyota Financial Services needed a national service provider that could offer the support required to maintain business continuity.

“The fact that Interactive could guarantee parts availability, and service resolution in our regional areas within 24 hours, was attractive to us,” Gosling said. Toyota Financial Services initially commenced its relationship with Interactive to provide critical server equipment maintenance and Interactive now provides support for all HP server and Cisco equipment.

When Toyota Financial Services experienced equipment failure in its regional office in Townsville, affecting the local branch’s phone system, the business was expected to be affected for many days.

“Townsville’s very difficult to access with only a couple of flights into the city each day. So when Interactive was able to get the required part to the office and have an agent on site to repair the system the next day, we were pleasantly surprised!

“Without Interactive’s quick response, we would have had to rely on mobile phones, which was not only an expensive alternative, but also looked unprofessional. Instead, we were able to rectify the issue quickly to minimise impact,” he said.

Interactive Director Simon Durkin says that businesses with a large number of geographically dispersed sites are increasingly moving towards consolidation of their maintenance contracts to look after all hardware maintenance issues.

“CIOs and IT departments don’t want to spend their precious resources managing multiple vendors. Consolidation of services allows the IT staff to maintain continuity with any maintenance issues resolved quickly and with minimum disruption to the business.

Toyota Financial Services now enjoys a reduction in business downtime as well as reduced maintenance support costs.