Productivity boost from IT management suite

With more than 300 stores across Australia and New Zealand, and nearly 5000 team members, the Super Cheap Auto Group Limited (Super Cheap Auto) has grown to become one of the largest retailers in the region.

Since its establishment in 1972, Super Cheap Auto, a specialty retail company, has expanded to three businesses: Supercheap Auto for automotive spare parts, hand and power tools; BCF, which sells boating, camping and fishing equipment; and Goldcross Cycles, which specialises in selling cycles and cycling equipment.

The success of the Super Cheap Auto business depends on offering the best customer services at the best value. The company prides itself in its ability to help find the right and most cost-effective products for its customer base.

To ensure the smooth functioning of its businesses and to manage its core IT operations, Super Cheap Auto had put in place a number of technologies and software from different vendors. These technologies connected EFTPOS machines and close to 3000 desktops and laptops, operating across its retail and warehouse outlets, with its main headquarters in Brisbane.

This proved to be an expensive exercise as separate company team members with different skill sets were required to maintain the different technologies, creating a complex IT environment. IT issues had to be addressed manually or over the phone, creating a time-consuming and complex audit trail.

With the core hub of its IT operations in Brisbane, Super Cheap Auto needed to upgrade its infrastructure so that its IT processes were streamlined and easily manageable (both remotely and physically) amongst all its retail, sourcing and warehousing outlets.

“We wanted our businesses across Australia, New Zealand and China to be connected to a single consistent IT suite that is simple to run yet effective,” said Phil Harrys, Technical Services Manager, Super Cheap Auto Group.

In order to consolidate to one platform, Super Cheap Auto invested in a range of LANDesk software. The company found that LANDesk had the right mix of software that offered the functionality it needed to integrate all its IT operations. It also provided the company a good fit for future expansion plans.

“It made technical and economical sense to go with one vendor to meet all our software needs, “said Harrys. “We needed to get an accurate understanding of the what, when and why behind the functioning of our machines and the software. With LANDesk, we get instant access to all this information without physically having to go from one machine to another.”

The LANDesk implementation comprised three core components: systems, security and service management. These components are all designed to help Super Cheap Auto’s support team to manage its extensive computing and IT environment - quickly, efficiently and easily.

The systems component consisted of implementing LANDesk Management Suite to control its entire software distribution and manage any configuration management processes. To protect its systems and keep up with security patches and virus updates, Super Cheap Auto installed LANDesk Security Suite, Server Manager and Antivirus Manager.

In order to seamlessly integrate enterprise, desktop, laptop and network management systems, LANDesk Service Desk was installed.

“Every business needs a strong foundation and the LANDesk suite of products has helped give Super Cheap Auto a robust IT foundation. The support we received from LANDesk has been great as they have helped us get some pretty huge challenges over the line. They were attentive to our needs and resolved to help us whenever any issues arose,” said Harrys.