With ten brands and over 30 kitchens across two cities, Montana Group is recognised as the largest privately-owned caterer in New Zealand. A food and event management specialist in the upper North Island, the Group is considered an industry leader with over 20 years of experience.
IT Partners have worked with Montana Group for several years, co-managing their IT activities in a true partnership model.
We spoke with Henry Macdonald, Head of Digital Systems at Montana Group, to discuss the details of this partnership.
Montana Group's business and brands have continued to grow and scale. From starting small and learning to balance and innovate, they now employ nearly 1,000 people across the Auckland and Waikato regions.
The co-managed IT relationship between IT Partners and Montana Group works in unison and is enhanced by harnessing the strength of each entity. For Montana’s internal IT team, that lies in their deep understanding of the organisation's context and relationships, while IT Partners bring a high level of service and expertise. Henry states, “Beyond traditional IT support, IT Partners provide valuable business support and guidance, working with their Virtual CIO (vCIO) to support the development of our systems strategy”.
Over the past five years, Montana Group has experienced significant growth, adding four new business units - three through acquisitions and one built from scratch. These included the school lunch programmes, the acquisition of Urban Gourmet and Dawsons’ and more recently, setting up at two new sites in Auckland. This growth impacted the Group’s IT resources, creating the need to accommodate the increased demands.
IT Partners provided two layers of support to help support the Montana Group in this transition. Henry states, "Firstly, they provided best practice and an expert sounding board." Which is essential for handling peak demands that sometimes exceed the capabilities of Montana Group's internal IT team. "Secondly, they provided augmented capacity". This was particularly important when Montana Group moved to Mountain Rd, delivered the ASB Classic, Rugby Sevens and started Lunchy, all within four months over Christmas. The ability to delegate projects to IT Partners was essential to their success.
Supporting the necessary digital transformation, including core infrastructure changes, Henry states that "IT Partners have played a vital role in meeting Montana Group's growing networking needs." As well as providing a valuable vCIO service, offering thought leadership and experienced guidance as Montana Group reviews its technology landscape and identifies system improvements to enhance efficiency, IT Partners also supports the Montana team with critical networking support.
Through expert guidance, capacity overflow support, and effective BAU infrastructure management, the co-managed IT partnership model between Montana Group and IT Partners accommodates scalability as the Group grows.
By having IT Partners handle essential maintenance and support while the internal IT team focuses on growth and tasks requiring deep context. This approach allows for targeted training and funding for growth initiatives. Henry shares, “Having a service desk with on-call engineers without the need to maintain them in-house adds significant value.”
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