Case Studies - Travis Perkins

Powernet Overview

Company Profile

Travis Perkins is a major player in the timber and building supplies market with over 1,000 sites nationwide, with a turnover of £2.85bn.

"Travis Perkins is delighted with Powernet and their Leased DSL Service, which has proven to be the most robust and cost effective network we have experienced."

Travis Perkin's expansion plan includes organic growth, but is primarily due to a policy of targeted acquisitions.

Technical Infrastructure

Not a traditional EPOS environment - no server processing at over 800 Branches - all at Central UNIX machine

All prices calculated in real time via multiple methods - e.g. size of order, customer profile, product promotion
Online access to a central warehouse and stock management system
Up to 80 people at larger branches, trading a product set of over 200,000 items
Products can be provisioned via branches, or direct from manufacturer to customer site
Maintaining connectivity is key to the business

Previous WAN = BT's fully managed MPLS with 128kbps 'tails'.

Driver for change = cost + deployment time to match acquisition requirements.

Leased DSL for Business At Work

Cost Reduction - 50%
Improved availability and performance
Availability - 99.99%
Latency - 25-35 milliseconds
Resiliency - no single point of failure
Disaster Recovery - accomplished within 1 hour
Faster implementation of new branch 'tails' - 14 days
Use of Voice Over IP
CCTV roll-out - further cost reduction
Better control over third party suppliers
Full visibility of operational details - in real time

Client Testimonial

"Travis Perkins is delighted with Powergroup and their Leased DSL Service, which has proven to be the most robust and cost effective network we have experienced."

Frank Smith, Group Information Technology Director,
Travis Perkins

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