White Stuff

White Stuff, the urban and outdoor clothing UK fashion retailer, has adopted a new managed communications solution in its 45 stores (14 live to date) and head office from Vodat International, the leading UK communications solution provider to the retail industry in order to reduce transaction times for customers, ensure compliance with Payments Card Industry (PCI) data security standards and boost inter-store communication with head office for enhanced reporting.

Vodat will provide a fully managed multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network. The managed network has built-in PCI DSS compliance to ensure that card holder details are protected. The network is also suitable for chip and pin facilities and will reduce transaction speeds for customers from around 40 seconds to 10.

More efficient store management

In addition, the solution enables stores to manage tasks more efficiently by communicating with head office. Venn Luscombe-Mahoney, IT Manager for White Stuff said, "The system gives us a standardised solution and closed loop audit trail; staff can send us pictures of window displays by connecting a digital camera to the store PC, report faults and incidents, and give us footfall data direct from our thermal imaging cameras."

White Stuff selected Vodat due to their extensive experience of providing managed communication solutions for the retail sector.  The stores will be connected via Private Access Broadband, while the head office will be connected via an SDSL line.  SDSL is quicker to provision than a leased line and has a robust Service Level Agreement - making it a cost effective alternative.  This also gives White Stuff the capacity to further enhance its network with additional features, such as VoIP telephony.

Having used a communications solution from its EPoS provider for some time, White Stuff had come to realise just how expensive and restricting the solution was. In order to improve efficiency and customer service in its 40 stores, and at the same time reduce management costs, White Stuff looked around the market to identify a more cost effective and flexible solution. Venn Luscombe-Mahoney IT Manager of White Stuff said, "Vodat were like a breath of fresh air, a good solution, plenty of flexibility and a high regard for what the customer wants."

Complete infrastructure for store reporting

Vodat International initially rolled out the broadband solution to eight White Stuff stores with a link to its new distribution centre in Leicester, comprising a broadband connection to stores and warehouse PCs, enabling anyone to connect to the company network from any site and operate in real time using familiar Internet protocol.

White Stuff now has a complete infrastructure for store reporting and Luscombe-Mahoney says that in the future, "We will start to do our own reporting and let store managers look at their store's performance based on best-sellers, speed of sale per item, best-performing staff and so on. The next step is to replace our old network with the Vodat network to complete the picture and have one flexible, cost effective, unified solution to our network requirements."

For more information about Vodat's managed networks for UK retail businesses including multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) networks, private broadband networks, SDSL lines and PCI DSS compliance services, please call us on 0161 406 1820 or contact us by e-mail.