Shell has renewed Unisys Africa`s maintenance and support contract for its southern African site systems in a deal worth R24 million.
The three-year contract affects retail sites in South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique and Botswana.
"The PEC 8850 is an integrated system that handles point of sale, pump control and fuel sales, dry stock and wet stock control and card payments at our forecourt service terminals (FSTs)," says Kirsty Scott, Retail IT Applications support manager at Shell. "Unisys will also service and maintain all the hardware at these sites which includes point-of-sale units, bar code scanners, receipt printers, back-office printers, UPSs, and site controlling desktop PCs in the back office."
"We have enjoyed a 13-year partnership with Shell in South Africa and the deal we brought to the table reflects our past and ongoing investment in that partnership with one of the continent`s largest organisations," says Dave Hannington, customer programme manager at Unisys Africa.
The PEC 8850 is a legacy system implemented in 1993. Each site operates independently on a LAN, with the WAN used only for card-based transaction switching. Between 10 and 20 people per site use the system daily.
Shell put the contract out to tender.
"Since we`re in the oil business, not the IT business, we wanted a third-party partner to bring us innovative ideas on cost reductions," says Scott. "It is a legacy system nearing the end of its lifecycle. The Unisys Africa offer reflected a thorough understanding of our key maintenance issues, and their knowledge of how to address them and work with us to improve system reliability. We expect a reduced number of support calls to the Shell Retail Automation Helpdesk (in-house), as well as a reduction in the calls escalated to Unisys."
"Globally, Shell is focused on delivery and growth - delivery in terms of operations and projects and investment in areas of anticipated market growth," says Scott.
"There is a practices and processes standardisation drive throughout the business and a move toward a global company that complies with global processes to reduce operational costs and improve profitability of its downstream business," she says.
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Unisys Africa is a black economic empowered subsidiary of Unisys Corporation - a global information technology services and solutions company. Unisys Africa combines its people`s expertise in consulting, systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure and server technology to build more secure organisations for clients by creating visibility into their business operations. For more information, visit www.unisys.co.za.
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