Peter Pane Restaurants Reduce Device Downtime with On-Demand Remote Support and Augmented Reality
European restaurant group consistently serves up excellent customer experience using Splashtop Enterprise
At a Glance
Challenge
Paniceus Systems, the IT specialists for Peter Pane restaurants, needed to remotely support more than 1,000+ endpoints (including mobile POS systems and office PCs) at 46 separate locations across Germany and Austria.
Solution
Paniceus Systems’ centralized IT team was able to advance their remote support capabilities using Splashtop’s AR feature while remaining GDPR compliant.
Results
With Splashtop Enterprise, Paniceus Systems securely supports all Peter Pane employees and devices, remotely. As a result, Paniceus has decreased travel time and costs, improved IT support and increased efficiency and overall customer experience. Using Splashtop AR, they’ve dramatically reduced device downtime by 50%.
Summary
Paniceus Systems provides IT support for Peter Pane, a growing restaurant franchise operating 46 restaurants across Germany and Austria. Björn Runge, Head of IT for Paniceus, had previously used TeamViewer for remote support. However, the solution underwent so many changes to its features, policies, and roll-out coordination that remote support had become inconsistent and overly complex.
If one of their servers had technical issues with their mobile POS device, it created downtime and had a negative effect on overall customer experience. Their IT team couldn’t rely on TeamViewer to effectively support restaurant employees remotely. Peter Pane was facing increased security risks and slower day-to-day operations as a result.
Today, Paniceus uses Splashtop Enterprise to remotely support Peter Pane restaurants. With Enterprise, they can support on site devices (handhelds, fixed and mobile POS systems and office PCs) from a centralized location. Paniceus has access to Splashtop Enterprise and all its features, including live, in-person support and the augmented reality feature, Splashtop Augmented Reality (AR). The AR feature has enabled their IT team to reduce device downtime by 50% when problems arise. Peter Pane restaurants are experiencing more freedom, flexibility and security with Splashtop Enterprise.
The Challenge: Supporting 1,000+ Endpoints at 46 Locations with Unique Support Needs
Paniceus Systems has 10 employees charged with supporting the entire Peter Pane franchise and its 1,000+ endpoints (Windows POS handheld terminals and fixed POS terminals, iOS and iPad iOS devices, business PCs at each location and corporate office computers).
Their existing remote support solution, TeamViewer, had become overly complex. With each location having unique remote support needs, IT had to quickly customize their remote support policies and easily coordinate them with non-technical teams at each location. When Björn reached out to TeamViewer, they sent him to online support forums. He was frustrated by the lack of support.
Paniceus also needed expert coordination and robust documentation to ensure nothing was overlooked from an inventory and security standpoint. “You have to get documentation right because we must know things like which devices are connected to what. It had become too complicated and expensive with the existing solution,” said Björn.
As a result, Björn decided to find a replacement remote support solution that his team could quickly implement. It had to be easily configurable to accommodate ongoing growth and changes to the Peter Pane franchise. “The most important thing for us was to have a secure, intuitive and easy-to-use solution,” said Björn.
To replace TeamViewer and provide remote support for technical and non-technical users alike, Paniceus needed a solution with the following characteristics:
Security: A GDPR-compliant solution that adheres to the highest security standards.
Simplicity: An intuitive, easy-to-use and configure solution.
Streamlined onboarding: A fast rollout and an online portal with self-explanatory pointers.
Single-point vendor support: A single-point contact with Customer Support to get answers fast if issues arose during roll-out to multiple locations.
Audit-ready documentation: Auditing and log files to make it easier to perform security checks around who accessed their systems.
Clear, affordable pricing: Anticipating and minimizing remote support costs to enable post-pandemic expansion.
The Solution: Paniceus Makes the Switch to Splashtop Enterprise and Splashtop AR
After evaluating several remote access solutions, including AnyDesk and FastViewer, Paniceus decided to switch from their cumbersome TeamViewer solution to Splashtop Enterprise. After testing, the IT team found Splashtop Enterprise had all the features they needed including augmented reality.
Super easy to implement: Both the IT technicians and end users found Splashtop Enterprise’s on-demand remote support function (SOS) incredibly easy to implement and work with on a daily basis. “It’s so easy in every aspect: implementation, roll-out to locations and custom configuration as needed,” said Björn. “The policies for the clients are very clean and make configuration especially easy.”
Streamlined configuration via GPO: Paniceus often struggled when configuring deployment policies. When the configuration needed to be distributed via the cloud to the client, an issue would arise, and they would have to write an XML file and upload it as part of the installation process. Not only did that take time and resources, but whenever they uninstalled the product, the configuration would disappear, and they would have to distribute it again.
Using Splashtop’s simple Group Policy Object (GPO) settings, IT can now rapidly make user and group-specific changes. “We no longer have to worry and say, ‘Oh no, I don’t have a configuration interface here’ or ‘How did Adobe Reader behave, and how did Windows behave?’ The GPO settings control how Splashtop behaves in a consistent way,” said Björn.
Support any device: Paniceus was particularly drawn to Splashtop’s capability of supporting multiple device types and operating systems within the same user session. A single restaurant can lose thousands of Euros in sales in a short period of downtime.
“In some emergency situations, the support shifts from one colleague to another and from a PC to an iPhone. It’s a mess when IT says, ‘Oh, I can’t help because you’re using a handheld, so I don’t know what’s happening on your screen.’ You don’t want that,” said Björn. “Splashtop is pretty perfect and lets us switch devices midstream. There are many possibilities to enable easy support.”
AR for visual needs: Most Peter Pane locations have employees whose main focus is hospitality, not technology. For them, standard remote support may not work when the issue revolves around cables, routers and servers. Paniceus tried using FaceTime and other video apps in those situations, but the IT support technician still couldn’t point to exactly what needed to be done.
Using Splashtop AR, Paniceus can support these employees’ visual needs. “Now IT can say, ‘let me take a look,’ and the supported user can watch the technician point directly to items and annotate in the shared video. Any user can follow that. It’s so easy to fix issues like cable changes, reboots, etc.,” said Björn.
When asked to describe his feelings about using Splashtop in three words, Björn admittedly had a tough time coming up with just three: “The three words are easy, affordable and very smart support. I guess that’s five words but very smart support matters.”
Featured Product
Splashtop Enterprise
Results: Innovative AR, Rapid Implementation, and Customization Deliver Strong ROI
In order to succeed, both the restaurant business and IT support require simplicity and speed. That’s why Björn says the impact of Splashtop Enterprise on Paniceus Systems was enormous. “Splashtop made it easy to control everything about the registry, group policies and related items. It allowed us to rapidly implement Splashtop in our environment. Following just a day of implementing our first clients, we slightly refined the configurations and immediately rolled out Splashtop to 100 new clients.”
In turn, Peter Pane restaurants experience less downtime when problems arise with their POS systems and other devices. In fact, in complex visual support scenarios, Peter Pane restaurants have cut their device downtime by 50% as a result of using Splashtop AR. On top of that, IT no longer has to travel to physical locations across Germany and Austria. They can resolve issues as they arise, saving time and money.
Overall, Paniceus has had an excellent experience with Splashtop Enterprise. Not only has it helped them decrease downtime, but it’s the perfect solution to support Peter Pane in their expansion. Based on their experience with Splashtop so far, Björn and his team are excited to try out more features in the future (i.e. Splashtop’s new service desk features).
“I would recommend Splashtop to anyone,” said, Björn. “I encourage you to try it out so you can experience how easy it is to use and how great the customer support is.”
About Peter Pane and Paniceus Systems
Paniceus Systems provides IT support for Peter Pane, a growing restaurant franchise based in Lübeck, operating 46 restaurants across Germany and Austria. Peter Pane serves great burgers with excellent customer service thanks to their dedicated staff of over 1,700 service industry professionals.
About Splashtop Enterprise
Splashtop Enterprise is an all-in-one remote access and remote support solution for organizations. High-performance remote sessions and a robust set of features enable productive remote work—even for creatives who need to access high-end workstations and software. IT teams can easily deploy and manage secure remote access for employees and also effectively support workstations and employee devices.
Splashtop AR
Splashtop AR is built to quickly solve off-site problems remotely. Save time and money by empowering your colleagues to fix technical problems by virtually going on-site instantly. Remotely view issues through their iOS or Android mobile device camera in real-time. Then use augmented reality annotations and two-way communication to guide, troubleshoot, and resolve issues live.
From the customer
I would recommend Splashtop to anyone. I encourage you to try it out, so you can experience how easy it is to use and how great the customer support is. Splashtop made it easy to control everything about the registry, group policies and related items. This allowed us to rapidly implement Splashtop in our environment.
Björn Runge, Head of IT for Paniceus
