Streamlined, sustainable fleet lifecycle at Hanes Australasia

The Challenge

Sean Davies, Group Infrastructure & Project Services Manager, and Honey Jadia, Infrastructure Analyst at Hanes Australasia were faced with a two pronged dilemma. Hanes had an ageing fleet of Apple Macs that was “generating lots of requests from the business to upgrade them. But a total refresh was a CapEx impossibility. It was important to be able to offer a new computer to every staff member with a preference for Macs. We had to solve this both from a financial perspective and as a valued employer.”

The organisation is primarily a Windows environment with only 150 Mac users from a total of 2500 in Hanes’ five sites – three in NSW, two in Victoria, plus three users in Queensland and one in Western Australia who report in to the organisation’s Kew, Victoria headquarters. Only 20 of the Macs were newer than three years old, with many approaching seven.

The Apple devices at Hanes are genuine workhorses and critical to its enterprise environment. Hanes’ design and marketing teams, in particular, have software needs or personal likings for Macs. “But, from an IT point of view, the management of this relatively small number was distracting while the combined asset value of the high end machines was considerable,” Sean says.

“To reduce complexity, we also needed to update our Standard Operating Environment, across all levels, every 12 months. This was always done as a separate project but we thought this could also be included in the management solution,” Honey says.

Hanes already had a trusted supplier relationship and highly successful Apple device MSA in place with CompNow. Sean approached their dedicated CompNow account manager with: “We have this problem…”

The Solution

Leveraging the existing managed service for all of Hanes’s Macs nationally, CompNow proposed a customised Device as a Service (DaaS) offering as the way to solve Hanes’ multi pronged problem.

The DaaS leverages every part of CompNow’s national service offering: from account management to financing, procurement, deployment and support, as well as its end of life program that ensures security and environmental considerations.

The expanded agreement would see all Hanes’ Mac users issued with the latest devices. CompNow would procure the new fleet using Jamf Pro management software and Apple’s device enrolment program. Then asset tagging, imaging and delivery to staff across Australia rounds out the process.

Hanes would avoid the large CapEx commitment and have the cost spread over 36 monthly fixed OpEx payments.

CompNow’s service fulfils Hanes’ corporate social responsibility values, and exemplifies Apple at Work, as seen in the management of each device’s complete lifecycle. The old fleet would be removed and securely data wiped. Each device then assessed as to whether it had secondhand sale value, could be donated, or salvaged for recycling.

CompNow takes ownership against the lease and refurbishes where they can to sell on appropriately as second hand devices,” Sean says.

“Because of the difficulty we had in the past when returning our Windows devices at end of lease, we had pushed back on discussions about a DaaS. But CompNow assured us that Macs hold their value. The proof of their confidence was in the financial agreement they proposed,” Sean says.

Throughout the three years of the contract, CompNow was to provide nationwide support with a mix of dedicated help desk and scheduled onsite visits.

“Management agreed the DaaS was the right direction – it would have the right impact on our books, and its lifecycle commitment would support our CSR,” Sean says.

“CompNow’s rollout team were great – whether on site or working remotely. Their technical people were fantastic helping us to get the right combination of equipment and applications working for our people,” Sean says.

The Benefits

Hanes’ MSA has been seamlessly expanded to include hardware procurement and deployment into a single monthly DaaS. From the Apple at Work scenario, the DaaS delivers a seamless user experience and a commitment to the fleet’s secure environmentally and financially sound lifecycle.

Importantly, the finance rate for the existing hardware is built in to ensure the devices have residual value, making it cheaper to finance than to buy.

“The CompNow DaaS made sense. We knew how well their managed services operated and folding in the cost of the equipment was a logical next step,” he says.

All staff with a preference for Macs now have current machines and, in three years, CompNow is contracted to take back the old and again replace with new. Part of the comprehensive plan proposed by CompNow is to start the refresh cycle at the 30 month mark to assess what new equipment is required to provide the lead time for uninterrupted service to Hanes’ staff.

The refresh now allows users to benefit from the latest business essential software from Apple, Adobe and Microsoft.

“We were able to swap out our really old equipment for the latest and greatest devices. CompNow will to buy back our entire fleet – even the relatively low value seven year old machines,” Honey says.

“Our DaaS streamlines management and support and takes away the admin work that consumed my team. We can now constantly run the latest OS and software packages and keep a modern deployment ongoing. We have happy employees,” Sean says. “And we expect even greater outcomes from our continuing partnership with CompNow.”