The Zen principle of simplicity could be applied to Yo Sushi’s adoption of outsourcing ­ – it makes IT a lot easier to manage, especially as the company grows at a rate of about 10 new restaurants a year.

Billy Waters, IT manager of the high-street restaurant chain, runs the leanest internal IT department in town ­ – it consists of him. Technology is provided by third parties.

“It is easier to manage other companies under outsourcing contracts, rather than employees, considering the nature of the restaurant business,” says Waters.

“Our highest level of support required is often outside conventional working hours, and to secure that I manage third parties to meet our IT needs.”

Yo Sushi uses a multi-protocol label switching network from managed services provider NetworkFlow, while connectivity and telephony is managed by GP Network Solutions.

Electronic point of sale (Epos) systems are provided and maintained by Clarity Commerce Solutions, labour management and human resources is provided by Fourth Hospitality, and Hiteishee is responsible for hardware procurement.

“The biggest benefit is I don’t have recruitment problems, but a drawback can be the level of commitment is not as high as someone working directly for the company,” says Waters.

“However, once a year we go through all the contracts to ensure we are getting the best service levels.”

To overcome the loyalty factor, Waters only works with UK-based companies and has strict business processes for handover to outsourcing companies when opening a new restaurant venue.

“A project manager oversees IT consultancy, property and design, but the handover for technical operations is fixed when we sign off each contract. This is generally a week before the opening and we check everything thoroughly,” says Waters.

Over the years, processes have improved and there is a debrief session after each opening to identify high points and hiccups.

“We use the same companies for every opening so it is normally very smooth, but you must guard against complacency,” says Waters.

Being able to accurately identify service levels is one area he is keen to develop.

“We have been tracking calls to our Epos systems provider on an ad hoc basis, but we want to formalise procedures so that we have reliable statistics about how quickly calls are responded to depending on their priority,” says Waters.

He says that once service levels are properly assessed, there is the opportunity for introducing financial penalties if targets are not met. And moving to a one-stop-shop for network requirements has relieved the communication problems that can be apparent when several providers are involved.

“Connectivity issues were a nightmare, as we could be looking at two to three days to get up and running. We had to deal with either GP or BT to check the telephone line, or the Epos company to troubleshoot any router problems,” says Waters. “Now I just call GP, who see the whole thing through to resolution.”

He also considers some outsourcing providers to be very innovative. “GP first looked after our fixed-line telephony, but as time has gone on we have taken more and more services, such as voice over IP,” he says.

With more time freed up to focus on IT strategy, Waters is keen that internal users do not automatically turn towards him in the event of a support issue.

“I have to manage employees to use the outsourcing people, so that I can focus more strategically on IT and not on the day-to-day stuff,” he says.