Partner Article

Richard Olds explores IT in retail

Richard Olds, CEO, Vista Support is an expert in the retail industry and he is responsible for growing the company into one of the UK’s leading independent Retails IT services company, supporting customers in the UK, Europe and North America. The business now provides hardware maintenance and support to the retail, hospitality and quick service restaurant (QSR) markets.

Why is it important for retailers to use an IT maintenance and support company that covers a large demographic?

It is vital that a retailer’s technology is up and running at all times to maximise customer spend. If a support company offers hardware maintenance and care for thousands of EPoS units and related peripherals across the UK, Ireland and international locations, a retailer can be confident that IT failures will have a minimal effect on business as expert help will be close at hand. For example, at Vista Support we provide high quality services nationwide as we truly know the cost to a retailer’s business of a system failure and the value of avoiding the resulting downtime. If a till system is not fixed fast and effectively this can have dramatic long term effects on trading as time is money.

Do support engineers require any specific skills to work in the retail sector?

If a support company employees ‘retail specific’ engineers that are experts in all elements of today’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) service market it enables an unparalleled suite of services to be delivered. We know that our industry-specific experts have the experience to handle every one of today’s retail IT systems and as a result, many technical problems can be resolved fast and effectively in the field. Our engineers are much like an AA serviceman who has to be able to fix any model car, motorbike or van at the side of the road, compared to, say, a Ford engineer who only has to specialise in fixing one brand of car.

Is it necessary for a support company to offer 24/7 cover?

Customers need to receive system support whenever they’re open, every retailing day of the year – anything less does not provide the high level of service customers require to keep a business functioning. However, when selecting a support company a retailer should not just look at the number of support hours offered but the response, fix times and whether or not the maintenance services will be held throughout the life of a retailer’s systems. These factors will all play an important role in getting the retailer up and running and should be very carefully considered.

Are there any other services a retailer should look for when choosing a maintenance supplier?

Yes, although Vista was originally created to provide hardware maintenance support, our services have developed to provide the installation and rollout services to retailers. We now successfully offer a complete integrated design, build, installation and maintenance service to our customers.

However, it is still important that retailers select a specialist support company so that they receive the best service. In fact, it is Vista Support’s speciality that makes us the fastest growing retail specific IT support organisation in the UK today - we generate all our revenue from the support of IT hardware in retail.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .