The customer is a global retail chain including more than 3,000 stores in Russia and the CIS. In 2018, the company decided to change the service provider for cash register equipment, and ICL Services, having extensive maintenance experience in this field, offered the best terms and won the contract.
At that time, the customer worked with different contractors in different regions, which is why the service was opaque and poorly controlled. The company planned to interact with a single service provider, capable of maintaining hundreds of stores, reducing response times and improving the quality of work.
During the first stage, the customer handed over for support 285 stores and later — another 800 points of sale. On average, each store has two cash registers. In the end, the ICL Services team served 2,000 cash registers in 27 regions of Russia — from the Krasnodar Krai to the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
At that time, the customer worked with different contractors in different regions, which is why the service was opaque and poorly controlled. The company planned to interact with a single service provider, capable of maintaining hundreds of stores, reducing response times and improving the quality of work.
During the first stage, the customer handed over for support 285 stores and later — another 800 points of sale. On average, each store has two cash registers. In the end, the ICL Services team served 2,000 cash registers in 27 regions of Russia — from the Krasnodar Krai to the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
Key Challenges
- Improvement of control over the maintenance of cash equipment by transferring all tasks to a single service provider
- Ensuring continuous operation of cash register lines in stores
Solution
Implemented our solution
- The main task of the service provider is to keep the cashier’s workplace operability. To do this, during the project implementation period, ICL Services specialists provided remote and onsite support, connected cash registers and managed a fleet of spare equipment.
Each cashier has a display, a cash drawer, a keyboard, a printer, a scanner, fiscal data recorders and memory devices. If any of these unites fail, the cashier cannot serve the customer. In this case, the cashier submits a request by phone or e-mail. These queries are accepted by three Service Desk specialists, including at night. They consult the cashier over the phone and find out the details of the incident.
Service Desk starts operations at five in the morning, as stores in different regions open at different times.
If the issue cannot be resolved at this stage, the query is referred to the second-line support, and developers connect to the store remotely to perform diagnostics. These specialists look for solutions to problems, draw up instructions for the first-line support, and advise field engineers if necessary.
All requests are registered in the Omnitracker integrated with the Snaryad system for field engineers. The DMS coordinator monitors all queries. This specialist is responsible for timely response to requests and checking whether the engineer has departed to resolve the incident and whether spare parts are ready at the warehouse. They also prepare reports for the customer. - In cases where the problem cannot be eliminated remotely, the query is referred to a field engineer via the Snaryad system.
As agreed with the customer, from the moment the task is received, the field engineer must respond to the site and resolve the incident within 72 hours.
Each major city has at least one field engineer; in total, about 100 specialists worked on this project in Russia.
Field engineers also install and configure cash registers in new stores, interact with warehouses and change spare parts. - The customer insisted that each store should always have working fiscal data recorders and memory devices, since it was impossible to make a sale without them. To ensure this, ICL Services specialists followed the equipment replacement schedule in thousand stores and timely performed the necessary operations.
ICL Services has completely taken over the management of the spare equipment fleet — from procurement and storage to logistics and replacement. Each month, the customer received detailed reports on the use of spare parts indicating the query numbers, locations and the quantity of replacement equipment.
Results
- Each month, the ICL Services team accepted 300–500 requests from stores, and the SLA level was never below the agreed 90%. By handing over to ICL Services more than 1,000 stores for support, the customer enabled predictable and transparent service, and store employees enjoyed prompt technical assistance. As a result, the customer reduced the downtime of stores.
- To date, the project has been completed due to strategic changes in the IT infrastructure of stores on the part of the customer. Nevertheless, we preserved good relations with the customer with a view to future partnership.