RETAILCOMMUNICATIONS
27 BERRY GARDENS PICKS NEW COMMS
Berry Gardens has recently implemented the WorkLife communications and collaboration service from its longstanding IT services provider, Star.
BMB GOES FOR TAILORED TECH FIT
UK menswear company BMB Clothing recently selected retail communications provider Vodat International to upgrade its network at its head office locations in Leeds, Goole and Har tlepool. The retailer, which has 170
concessions and 28 of its own stores, is upgrading to a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network, which will also help how stock is allocated from the head office environment to retail stores, which include; Suit Direct, Racing Green, Suit Direct and Jeff Banks. Mark Keeble, IT suppor t manager
at BMB, said: “Our existing network was struggling to cope with the increased demands of our growing business, in par ticular with the radio frequency stock scanning system in our warehouses. The Vodat network will not only give us increased bandwidth with the flexibility of adding more when required, but will also give us greater visibility and control of the network traffic.” Keeble added: “The active network
monitoring that Vodat provides will aler t us instantly to problems, allowing us to take appropriate remedial action, and the resilience built in to the network will keep our critical business areas online and ahead of the game.”
The UK soft and stone fruit
production and marketing company, working on behalf of approximately 60 UK growers, needed to modernise its operations to meet the demands of supermarkets. A near 24-hour pick, pack and ship
policy meant changing the way email systems were managed and providing them in a secure and reliable manner. James Judge, Berry Gardens IT
manager, said: “The market for soft and stone fruit has changed. Demand from supermarkets has increased as has their requirements for shor ter supply chains and increased product shelf life. We need to find ways to work smar ter that assist
us in meeting those requirements.” The WorkLife hosted communications
service for all 150 staff enables staff them access resources from any device and any location securely and easily, while IT management overheads are kept to a minimum. Judge explained: “With Star’s help we
can suppor t the entire organisation with a three man IT team. I can spend 30% of my time on day-to-day IT management issues and dedicate the other 70% to driving innovation in the business. Star is a strategic par tner to Berry Gardens, helping ensure we stay the number one provider of soft and stone fruit in the UK.”
BEAVERBROOKS FULFILS MOBILE WI-FI
UK watch and jewellery retailer Beaverbrook’s has enhanced the capabilities of mobile devices in its stores using Meraki wireless large area network (LAN). Meraki’s Cloud Controller is
delivering wireless coverage that provides centralised network management across Beaverbrooks’ 64 stores, suppor ting staff tablet devices used for product detail display and electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) functionality. Patrick Walker, head of IT for
Beaverbrooks, said: “We recognise if someone is making a significant purchase such as a wedding ring or a watch, it can ruin the occasion somewhat if we then have to then take them off to a till to process the sale. We therefore invested in netbooks in all our stores and developed our own bespoke EPoS system that runs on the mobile devices. To make this happen we first needed to implement a secure Wi-Fi network in all of our stores.” After the Meraki 802.11n
access points had successfully been introduced in larger stores, Walker
and his team decided to roll it out to the remaining outlets – 20 access points have now been installed and the process is still ongoing. The LAN will also suppor t instore
public Wi-Fi plans in response to customer demand. The Cloud Controller is designed to intelligently switch to other channels if it experiences any issues, assuring staff and future customer availability.
JULY/AUGUST 2012 RETAIL TECHNOLOGY
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40