Keycorp wins McDonalds

Keycorp's services arm, EFTPOS Engineering, has rolled out technical and helpdesk support for new Point-of-Sale Pos4 integrated food supply systems; and In-Store Process (ISP) back-office functions, including commissioning and configuring of the computers, in 250 McDonalds outlets. The implementation will now enter an assessment phase before roll-out to the remaining 450 restaurants.

Joe Bonin, general manager at EFTPOS Engineering, said there were definite expansion possibilities for EFTPOS Engineering in the confluence of EFTPOS and other IT systems.

“I think McDonalds saw what we saw a few years ago, that in terms of [electronic] transactions through a secure network, there's a confluence going on. The cut-over between EFTPOS and these other [IT] systems, they saw the merit of putting it in-house,” he said.

EFTPOS Engineering has already doubled employee numbers working on the McDonalds contracts, from 8 to 16. Bonin said EFTPOS Engineering would leverage the related expertise to spur growth over the next 12 to 18 months. “We've got 68 staff in total, and we'd like to have 100 [staff] in two or three years ... to make us a significant player in three years,” he said.

Bonin said the contracts validated EFTPOS Engineering's recent shift in strategy towards supporting a range of IT systems instead of EFTPOS alone.

“Software and hardware are like hand-in-glove these days. We can't just support one without the other,” he said.

Michael Schofield, national store systems support manager at McDonalds, said EFTPOS Engineering would provide around-the-clock helpdesk support for about 500 new Point of Sale Pos4 integrated supply systems in about 80 restaurants. “It's very business critical [for McDonalds]. EFTPOS Engineering will provide first- and second-level support to ISP back-office systems in McDonalds' 240 company-owned stores,” Schofield said.

McDonalds would lower its total cost of ownership, by using a single point of contact for its stores for all POS and back-office systems. The Pos4 POS system was newly installed so needed support infrastructure.

“EFTPOS Engineering established a strong track record with McDonalds through its EFTPOS support for more than three years. It made a lot of sense to integrate those services with support for our other systems. EFTPOS Engineering was one of few companies able to do that,” Schofield said.

The three contracts, one of which is an extension to the existing EFTPOS contract with McDonalds, were finalised in January. Keycorp, which is majority-owned by Telstra, refused to divulge the dollar value of the contracts.