Technology is seen as a fundamental tool to help achieve the high levels of customer service that the company is committed to delivering. The new connection will support tablet devices that are used by staff to display product details and Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) systems that record sales no matter where the sales assistant is located in the store.
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 WiFi network in all of our stores.”
The high performance 802 11n access points installed are reliable enough to provide a connection that can overcome the challenges posed by interference in the busy shopping centre locations of most Beaverbrooks shops. As a result, the Cloud Controller also avoids security risks that are caused by this. After the Meraki solution had successfully been introduced in the larger stores, Patrick 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.
Despite Beaverbrooks’ complicated infrastructure, Meraki is able to converge a number of wireless networks in close proximity which makes them very easy to use. The solution will also support in-store public WiFi, which is coming soon in response to the increasing customer demand. The Cloud Controller can intelligently switch to other channels if it is experiencing any issues, meaning customer experiences are never compromised.