Introduction
Novo Shoes is retail company that offers quality footwear for women with a focus on outstanding customer service. Novo Shoes opened their first store in 2002, and today have over 125 stores across Australia and New Zealand.
Due to this significant expansion of their retail store network, Novo needed a telecommunications solution which would simplify their communication systems, and which could handle continuous growth.
The challenge
Together Novo and C9 Communications analyzed the business’s telecommunication needs, discussed the current challenges, and identified potential areas for future expansion.
To overcome the company’s current challenges and improve the efficiency of communication within the store network, three principal areas for improvement were identified:
Networking – All data, workflows, and transactions, including access to cloud-based services or the internet, required traffic to be backhauled to the data centre for processing and redistribution using MPLS. Even though this was a secure method but its wasn’t carrier-agnostic, which posed a significant cost for each new store and was not a flexible option as the business expanded due to lack of their carrier network availability at all sites. There was no failover option for the retail sites. No redundancy could be catastrophic for Novo during Christmas time (retail’s busiest period) with limited-service provider support and inflexible network.
Voice – Average call quality via their existing telephone system was frustrating for customers and staff. This was due to the use of analog phones and using ATA’s (Analog Telephone Adaptor) and configuration of voice over their MPLS Network that would cause congestion.
Internet – Poor internet speeds, as well as coverage within stores meant that staff regularly experienced dropouts, which affected their POS systems & payment systems like Afterpay which caused staff significant frustration. Majority of sites in New Zealand were still running on ADSL internet.
The Solution
C9 Communications developed a strategy to streamline telecommunications at Novo Shoes which would result in higher quality calls, faster, reliable internet and more efficient store roll outs as the company continues to expand. This was achieved through:
Networking – Our carrier agnostic, fully managed SD-WAN solution replaced their MPLS network, which provides a more flexible, secure, and cost-effective solution. Our SD-WAN reduces costs by providing optimised, multi-point connectivity (Fibre, NBN, LTE) using distributed, private data traffic exchange and control points to give users secure, local access to the services they need – whether from the network or the cloud – while securing direct access to cloud, and internet resources. SD-WAN recognises applications and can adapt bandwidth and other services accordingly. It can initiate multiple parallel connections and then provide granular load balancing between them, and even fail over to a new connection should there be a drop in available bandwidth, as well as rate-limitless sensitive applications to ensure that latency-sensitive applications receive all the bandwidth they require
Voice – C9X our Hosted telephony’s provisioned IP handsets replaced the old analog phones, resulting in a streamlined telephone system for the head office & all retail stores across Australia and New Zealand, higher quality calls at a lower cost. Via our unified communications platform, Novo shoes staff can now also communicate vis mobile apps as well.
Internet – Upgraded to the latest available NBN technologies available in the Australian stores. All New Zealand stores were upgraded from ADSL to UFB. The Novo Head Office was upgraded to a high speed C9 fiber 1000Mbps dedicated link with an additional link, providing automated failover using SDWAN. C9 managed routers provide automated LTE failover at key stores.
Project Management & Support – A dedicated team at C9 communications provided project management, coordinating the different entities (NBN Co, UFB, Upstream providers, shopping Centre management, electricians, builders etc.) to ensure products were delivered and installed systematically and that business operations could continue as the upgrades were rolled out with no downtime.
Result
C9 Communications’s Telecommunication strategy has provided a simple, robust, and cost-effective solution to the challenges faced by Novo Shoes as their business expanded.
Novo Shoes now has a modern telecommunication system which provides cloud-based network monitoring, clear and responsive phone systems, and fast and reliable internet connections. Project management through C9 Communications ensured no business down time and a smooth transition to the new systems.
