CS Holdings secures three-year outsource deal with RentWorks

JSE-listed CS Holdings has secured a three-year outsourcing deal with RentWorks South Africa. Valued at over R1.5 million, the contract includes the provision of programme and operations management, a helpdesk, an IMAC service, procurement service, vendor management, deskside support and maintenance, server administration, maintenance and support, and network management.

RentWorks is SA`s leading technology rental company. The company was established in 1988 to provide rental finance solutions through direct channels as well as through the development of vendor finance programs for technology manufacturers and large resellers. RentWorks SA`s local head office is situated in Bryanston, with regional offices in Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth.

"The rapid growth of our business has meant increased reliance on our IT infrastructure and key business systems," says Jane Cartwright, GM Operations of RentWorks. "The support structure and processes necessary to maintain availability and continuity of access to the infrastructure had not kept pace with the business growth. "Additionally, there were no metrics in place to gauge the performance of our IT services.

"The option of growing our internal IT support team would maintain the flexibility of response to user requests for assistance currently experienced, but would need considerable investment and management time to introduce the level of services, skills and systems to address the issues raised previously. Consequently, we decided on an outsource agreement as the preferred way of delivering on expectations of improved and consistent IT support and minimising business risk."

Selecting CS Holdings was a lengthy process of investigation, due diligence and negotiation, says Cartwright, and was based, inter alia, on the company`s local market reputation and market penetration and understanding of the RentWorks outsourcing needs. "Other factors included their ability to implement network monitoring tools to proactively manage the day-to-day operations, as well as the cost saving benefits, ease of support and scalable expansion capability."

"Outsourcing their IT operations will give RentWorks access to a wider IT knowledge support structure and enable their corporate IT management to focus on the company`s broader global requirements, leaving the day-to-day operations to a professional outsource service provider," says CS Holdings programme manager Ralph Smit. "Our objective is to gain scalability of the generic IT functions across the RentWorks environment, thus enabling the services to be scaled in size and cost, should the core functions be changed in the future."

Smit says outsourcing will also reduce the risk of loss of key staff for RentWorks. "We aim to improve service levels to RentWorks in Johannesburg by leveraging on proven professionals who can demonstrate use of industry best practices and skilled resources."