Canadian Restaurant Company Finds HEAT the Recipe for World-Class Service Delivery
Restaurant operator keeps network at 99.9 percent uptime with DiscoverNET and HEAT Dublin, CA Friday, July 28, 2006 When Cara Operations Ltd., found itself reacting to, rather than anticipating IT disruptions, the operator of popular chain restaurants such as Swiss Chalet and Harvey’s turned to FrontRange™HEAT. In order to maintain IT service levels at its more than 1,200 restaurants across Canada, Cara implemented this industry-leading service management application, enabling the company to provide exceptional service with HEAT’s trouble ticket creation and routing capabilities. With HEAT, once an IT problem at any of Cara’s 1,200 restaurants is logged, the issue is routed to a technician who begins working on the disruption. Once HEAT was deployed, Cara saw an immediate improvement in service, boosting first-call resolution from 60 percent to 82 percent.
John Thompson, service desk manager for Cara, says the company relies heavily on high-speed Internet access for credit card sales, which account for 40 percent of all transactions. Before deploying HEAT, the service desk found it difficult to manage these critical financial transaction connections and devices with a variety of disparate, disconnected systems and spreadsheets. “Our problem was not knowing what was going on in the field,” Thompson said.
Working with FrontRange partner Crystal Clearview Consultants Inc., Cara implemented HEAT Service & Support to track and improve its overall service desk performance. According to Thompson, HEAT stood out for its ease of use and customizability.
Founded in 1883, Cara initially sold refreshments and magazines in rail stations across Canada. The company now operates some of the most recognizable restaurants in the country. Cara’s dedication to high-quality food and customer experience requires keeping IT service at an exceptional level. “HEAT helps us improve our guest service by allowing us to deliver world-class IT service to our restaurants,” Thompson said. Improved guest service and fewer IT outages contribute directly to the financial performance of Cara’s restaurants.
In 2005, Cara’s IT department further improved its service by implementing DiscoverNET, which monitors, analyzes and manages all 1,200 locations remotely. DiscoverNET monitors every restaurant’s infrastructure around the clock, proactively identifying problems. During an outage, or after a device fails, DiscoverNET immediately alerts HEAT, which assigns a ticket. Based on the nature of the problem, Cara contacts the appropriate vendor or service provider to fix or replace the network or device. The seamless integration between HEAT and DiscoverNET allows Cara’s service desk to monitor all locations proactively, and resolve issues immediately.
“With DiscoverNET, we have real-time, in-your-face monitoring,” Thompson said. “We don’t have to depend on someone noticing if a location is out. DiscoverNET does all that for us. It predicts an outage before employees even know about it, and all we have to do is start working on the solution.”
Thompson said seamless integration is important to Cara. “Cara is not a technology company. We didn’t want to buy a product that was hard to use or that we’d have to spend a lot of time getting right. HEAT is that product. It’s easy to use, it’s in your face, and it doesn’t require a lot of maintenance. That’s why we selected it.”
Filed under: Goldmine
