Greencross – for happy, healthy pets
Petbarn stores and Greencross vets are familiar to pet owners across Australia, helping animal lovers to create a happy, healthy life for their four-legged friends. The Greencross Pet Wellness Company also includes specialist emergency centres, animal hospitals, and pet crematoria.
Providing the IT to support stores and clinics
With 230 Petbarn stores, 140 veterinary practices, 20 emergency animal hospitals and three crematoria across Australia, managing the rollout and support of IT systems is a big task. It’s the responsibility of Renee Trevarthen, the Greencross IT operations manager. Renee manages operations, support and deployments across the entire group. As she explains; ‘My team were carrying out all the IT rollouts for new stores and clinics, and refurbishments of existing sites. We had a large pipeline of projects, but with limited resources, we weren’t able to get through them at the speed that the business needed. Once the equipment is installed, we support it via our help desk, but we were stretched in that area too.’
Greencross’ partnership with IMI
Greencross were introduced to IMI in 2022 and Renee first engaged them to deploy all the required IT equipment to the new and refurbished sites – including point of sale (POS), desktops, laptops, communications racks, servers and printers. In the vet clinics, IMI also configure the equipment for the different modalities used, such as x-rays, CT and MRI scanners.
This approach was so successful that Renee soon expanded the partnership with IMI to cover the entire equipment lifecycle, which encompasses:
- hardware procurement
- inventory management and receipt of equipment into the IMI warehouse
- staging and build services – loading the correct image onto each device
- shipping to the stores and clinics
- onsite installation
- field break/fix services – if an issue requires onsite attendance, Greencross passes it to IMI, who support end-users with anything from broken hardware to connectivity, printing to WiFi to mobile devices.
Renee says that one of the reasons that the IMI service works so well is the time they invested at the start in getting to understand the Greencross environment.
‘We did have documentation’, explains Renee, ‘but there were gaps. IMI actively found those gaps, and built the documentation in a way that enables us to take a cookie-cutter approach. No matter which store, which state, which engineer, we know it will be implemented and supported in exactly the same way.’
Positive outcomes
Renee has seen three main positive outcomes since working with IMI:
Installation speed and certainty
‘Firstly, we can get stores opened/reopened much faster and can commit to dates with confidence. That’s because whereas our small in-house team had to do things serially, one store or state at a time, IMI has the resources to work in parallel, so the installations get done faster and with greater reliability’.
For example, when Greencross ran a co-location project to put vet clinics into stores, they were able to do so consistently with just a one week closure per store, which minimised revenue loss and made planning much more straightforward.
Team focus
‘The second benefit is that my team always had competing priorities, but with IMI taking care of the day to day operational support, they are freed up to work on new projects that drive the business forward.’
Team morale
‘The third factor is that the level of morale in my team has increased because of the engagement with IMI. There is a level of trust – my team know that when they hand over a project to IMI, things will get done and get done right the first time.’
IMI’s strengths
Renee sums up the strengths that IMI bring to the Greencross organisation:
‘Whatever challenge we throw at them, they’re ready and willing to get in and help’, she says. ‘In February 2023 we had to change almost all the IT equipment in six hospitals at very short notice. IMI had equipment in stock, deployed it the next day, and stayed onsite to show our team how to use the new technology. It was an amazing level of support.’
‘IMI are very reliable and easy to work with - they’re always there, just an email or phone call away.’
‘They’re great communicators, which is essential in a new store project where success depends on everyone working together – builders, property and facility managers, my internal IT team, NBN installers. IMI clearly update us on status and any risks, and they have the flexibility to adjust their schedules to fit round the other suppliers.’
‘As our business evolves, they make sure they learn about the changes we’re making and update the documentation to reflect them.’
Renee sums it up this way: ‘I really don’t see IMI as a vendor’, she says, ‘they’re a partner. I think of them as an extension of my team.’
