KFP Podcast - Managed Services

KFP 365 – Managed Services podcast transcript

Welcome to our podcast, today I'm talking around Managed Services for our retail clients.

I'm Steve Chambers, Head of Sales & Marketing and I just want to speak for a few minutes today about our Managed Services offerings where we can be a more proactive partner and provider for our clients rather than just waiting for something to fail in store, we can add intelligence and add value to our customer base by hopefully knowing there's a problem in store before they know and in some instances, being able to solve that problem before it actually becomes an issue for the store.

Recently, we have branded a new service called ‘KFP 365’. This is an agent based proactive solution for our customers within their retail estates, so whereas traditionally we've done break fix support for customers, if a part fails, we visit site, we get it replaced.

This service is geared more around remote management of those devices, so we have a software solution, which is stitched into our managed platform here at KFP, so the whole thing is delivered from one platform and this allows us to have agents installed on key devices within our client's retail stores where we can be constantly understanding the state of that device, whether there's any parameters that can be set to tell us whether that device may be struggling regards, whether it be processor based or memory usage or storage, all that kind of stuff that feeds back into our systems to let us know if there's going to be a problem on a device before it actually occurs.

The beauty of this type of approach is it means it's much, much more proactive and value based. So we can, for example, be highlighting POS devices, let's say for example, that that customers might be using in their stores that for whatever reason might be starting to struggle, so as we come towards peak periods for customers, we can start flagging devices that might need some sort of attention before they actually fall over.

So the monitoring platform that we're able to provide can keep an eye on those key devices in store and we have got a constant heartbeat to that device, a constant route into that device so that if we can see patterns emerging where it might be starting to give a problem in the future then we can pre-empt that, we can work with a customer and get that device replaced but at a time when the store may be a bit quieter, maybe first thing in the morning or lasting at night so we can get that store in the best possible position to trade before failures actually occur.

So that's what the whole Managed Service piece is designed to deliver for our clients. As I said earlier, we deploy an agent on all of these devices, that gives us the window into the device, that gives us the ability to remote onto the device, that gives the ability for the client to raise a ticket within our systems from the device, all that sort of functionality and remote management is stitched into the platform to allow us to deliver that service.

Even more critically, we can deploy a number of IT admin type functions from that system on our client devices. So whether it be things like testing patch management, rolling out software, delivering updates, all of those things can be automated, packaged and deployed via the agent based system that we offer, which again, keeps the store estate hardware in a prime state of use ultimately.

So that we can essentially reduce the time that this hardware's going to be potentially offline for the customers, making sure they can trade, making sure the devices are available, making sure that we can maximize that customer's uptime to deliver a key service.

So that's the whole manage piece, which can be stitched together and blended in with our traditional break-fix services to enable us to deliver that end-to-end function, that end-to-end solution, that turn-key solution that our customers are looking for.

So whether they're looking for helpdesk functions, in-store, break fix functions, remote management, automated IT admin, all those things can be stitched together via our value platforms, can really deliver a key service for our clients.

Thanks for your time. Thanks for listening to some of the information we've got here around our value-based support services. Of course, feel free to get in touch if you'd like to talk about any of these services.

If you have an account management touchpoint within KFP, feel free to reach out to those guys and we'll be more than happy to help, alternatively visit our website at www.kfpit.com.

There's a raft of information there on Retail Support Services, Managed Services and hopefully we can help you deliver that automated value-based support for your retail stores in the future.