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The Customer
Footaslyum was established in 2005 and now covers over 70 high street stores across the UK. The retailer has made its name as a leading brand selling fashion street wear and sportswear.
From an IT perspective, Footasylum needed high-speed connectivity across each of its retail sites – a head office and two distribution centres based in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
Fast, reliable connectivity is essential to record sales figures, providing consistent communications across all sites and ensuring stores are properly supplied.
“Partnering with Node4 means we do not need to worry about connectivity being unavailable and if there are any issues they will be dealt with promptly.”
The Challenge
In 2010, Footasylum turned to Node4 to provide a connectivity solution that would allow the company to speed up the delivery of broadband to retail sites, as well as support a restructuring of its central head office and distribution sites. At the time, Footasylum was operating around 20 sites across the UK but required a solution to support rapid growth.
The head office and distribution centre originally operated from a single site, but in 2011 Footasylum moved the distribution centre to a new location approximately four miles from its head office. In 2012, a third unit was added – meaning Footasylum can better support the added distribution demands of future growth.
“Our existing supplier wasn’t really equipped to cope with our growth demands and we had to look elsewhere. It was imperative to find a connectivity provider that could deliver high-speed broadband between all main central sites, but also to get a high number of stores up and running with broadband in a short space of time. Node4 was able to provide a high-quality solution with the necessary level of technical expertise and support.” Matt Ruehorn, IT Manager, Footasylum
The Solution
Node4 provided a high-speed fibre connection between Footasylum’s main sites for around 250 users to support the use of VoIP and online business applications. On top of that, Node4 also delivered its resilient Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network to connect all Footasylum retail sites to the head office and the distribution centres.
“Broadband is like running water in the sense that nobody notices that it isn’t there until it’s not available. Partnering with Node4 means we do not need to worry about connectivity being unavailable and if there are any issues they will be dealt with promptly.” Matt Ruehorn, IT Manager, Footasylum
The feedback
The MPLS network now allows Footasylum, which added 15 shops to its retail empire in the space of four years, to open new sites fully equipped with high-speed broadband far more comfortably than it was previously able to do. This ensures that Footasylum has tighter control over its connectivity provision to individual sites.
“When providing broadband to a new site there is a four week period in between sorting out the lease and administration to opening the store. Once this has been achieved we have to install the PSTN lines, which can take two to three weeks. This means that we need to be able to guarantee that we can deliver the ASDL lines within one week to ensure the store opens with a broadband connection. As our IT partner, Node4 supplies and installs the equipment itself so we have complete control over the speed of this broadband provision.”
Matt Ruehorn, IT Manager, Footasylum
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