With a service patch of almost 1.4 million square kilometres NEC’s Northern Territory-based technicians face a unique challenge.

Under the $34.6 million Department of Education Services contract technicians are required to visit schools to fix software, hardware and communications problems.

Milikapiti School in the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin can be reached only by light plane or boat. Until the introduction of iCentre, principal Suzanne Brogan has phoned the Darwin service centre to report any problems, and kept an A4 book of to-do lists that she has handed to technicians when they arrive.

In the future all service requests can be logged over the internet directly into NEC’s HP Service Management platform that logs tickets and keeps track of systems performance and support.

This week the major problem that faced NEC technician Garry Lockyer when he flew to the school was a bank of laptops that weren’t charging properly. But in the past he’s had to deal with inactive smartboards, software patches and, in the wet, cleaning green mould out of laptops to get them working again.

Following the 2012 $260 million purchase of Darwin-based CSG Solutions NEC has contracts in place to manage technical support for schools, health clinics, police and ranger stations across the Northern Territory. NEC has a contract in place with Vertical Technology Solutions to fly technicians around the Territory until 2017, and maintains a staff of 200 in the Northern Territory – even more than it has in NSW.

But the company is also expanding its national credentials. In October it announced it had won the contract to manage, maintain and support the central and local data networks of all South Australia government agencies. In September it won a $150 million technical support contract as part of the Department of Defence’s centralised processing project.

It’s also on track according to Tetsuro Akagi, managing director, to return to profitability.
In its last financial year the company made a $22.3 million net loss on revenues of $364 million. Akagi this week said that the company was on track to return to profitability before the end of the year.

The author visited Milikapiti as a guest of NEC and with the permission of Tiwi Land Council and Landowners.