ramsac, a leading IT solutions consultancy today announces that it is has completed an IT upgrade for AMT Coffee – the founders and leaders of gourmet take-away coffee in the UK. The project included an extensive IT healthcheck, the implementation of new servers and networking infrastructure, and the provision of ongoing support for the in house team including acting as an independent intermediary between the company and its other technology suppliers.
AMT Coffee serves 35,000 cups of 100% fair-trade and organic coffee each day, from its 66 retail bars throughout the UK including rail stations, airports and city centres, as well as locations in Ireland, Belgium and Germany. The company relies heavily on its IT infrastructure, which connects its head-office, distribution centre and engineering warehouse with each of the retail bars.
An extensive IT health-check completed by ramsac confirmed that various infrastructure upgrades were required to cope with the increasing demands that the company were placing upon the network. In addition to the hardware and software located at the head-office and distribution centre (including the Blackberry’s and laptops used by the operations team), each of the retail bars are equipped with up to three EPOS enabled tills, which connect to the distribution centre to manage stock ordering, replenishment and logistics. Furthermore, each bar can have up to 12 CCTV surveillance cameras installed and this high volume of traffic also runs over the IT network.
Chief Operating Officer at AMT Coffee, Jon Hassall explains: “The speed of our growth was placing additional pressure on our IT infrastructure, particularly our servers, and we were experiencing problems with our EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) provider. We also felt that our already established IT team would benefit greatly from some second line support, strategic guidance and education.”
Technical Director at ramsac, Paul Mew, explains: “Our approach was to help AMT Coffee make the best use of their existing IT investments and only specify new or replacement technologies, timescales for their implementation and approaches to managing them, when required by the business.”
ramsac is also providing AMT Coffee with second and third line technical support to back up the in house team, fill any knowledge gaps and provide contingency cover for the business. Hassall adds: “Our team benefits from the additional support and expertise ramsac brings and enjoy working with other likeminded experts, who can talk the same language and share the same goals for the company.”