CLIENT PROFILE:
Toyota Financial Services (TFS) began in New Zealand in 1989 and since then has become the biggest motor vehicle manufacturer-owned finance company in the country.
They offer vehicle finance, leasing and insurance products through the 45 independently owned Toyota dealerships throughout the country, and also offer Toyota Marine Finance products to the New Zealand boating public. In addition, they offer personal loans to Toyota owners and the Toyota Financial Services Shell fuel card to business customers.
The company is owned by Toyota Financial Services Corporation of Japan, part of the Toyota Motor Corporation group of companies. There are 31 subsidiaries around the world with further growth planned. Offices are spread across the Americas, Europe and the Asia/Oceania region. The corporation has over $95bn USD total assets, and worldwide they provide services to over 11 million customers employing approximately 8,000 staff.
In New Zealand total assets are greater than $700m NZD.
CHALLENGE:
A rapidly growing business over-stretching the resources of its previous I.T. support.
TFS was a rapidly growing business, with resulting, significant challenges keeping up with internal growth. It required support for a high-level corporate infrastructure offering finance to all its dealerships.
TFS had some I.T. resource internally, as well as I.T. service and support from some third party partners. However, because these partners were smaller, they were increasingly struggling to cope with the demands of theTFS Network and simply did not have the capability and resource demanded by the business.
TFS was ‘looking for a better way’, needing to combine it’s internal I.T. administration with one third party partner who had sufficient resources to create one solution - ‘keep the lights on’ - as well as providing strategic direction and support, implemented on an ongoing basis.
TFS posed the challenge to Origin IT (OIT) to not only reduce Network costs but also give its users a better experience around I.T.
SOLUTION:
The right partner – IT expertise offering end-to-end solutions and the right cultural fit
TFS went to market with an RFP talking to several Vendors, to find its ideal I.T. partner fit and settled with Origin. TFS immediately recognised the perfect fit that Origin’s ONEFEE PLATINUM product had with its business model, ‘out of the box’. ONEFEE PLATINUM offers personal, on-site engineering expertise, ranging from a few hours, up to 40 per week.
A key requirement TFS had for a new I.T. partner was cultural fit – being a Japanese-derived business this was very important. With its CANI corporate ethos (constant and never-ending improvement) Origin also holds similar values, vital to any partnership it has. The fit with TFS was obvious.
TFS had a complicated I.T. Network infrastructure. This included VMware, EMC SANS, disaster recovery requirements, as well as very complex reporting back to Japan, which required high level security and firewall requirements, to reflect the sensitivity of the data transfer.
RESULTS:
On-site weekly expertise, with the required flexibility
ONEFEE PLATINUM allowed TFS to continue with access to a full-time, on-site Engineer with flexibility to tailor time on-site. At the same time, TFS have access to an expert team resource of consultants, engineers and project managers across the Origin team in areas such as virtualisation, network security, servers, disaster recovery and so on.
This flexibility fit in with TFS’s needs. TFS is extremely happy with the transition to Origin IT, and to date the partnership has worked extremely well and the expertise of the Origin IT team has been well received.
