Macquarie Telecom’s partnership with with City Beach leads to it’s most successful peak retail season in line with record-breaking online sales across Australia.
Macquarie Telecom launched SD-WAN services in 66 City Beach stores providing a stable and scalable network enabling it to concentrate on technical innovation rather than focusing on system issues.
City Beach, an Australian youth fashion retailer, opened a Queen Street Mall store in Brisbane in 1980 to capitalise on emerging trends.
After several system outages that occurred during 2020, City Beach decided to roll out SDWAN and better NBN connectivity to meet customer and employee demands.
Macquarie Telecom group executive Luke Clifton said, “Much like we’ve left certain styles of clothing in the past, it’s also imperative for organisations to shrug free of outdated technology to properly serve customers and ensure staff have the tools and speed to do their jobs properly,”
“This is another example of two Australian companies coming together to deliver on this vision and ensure better experiences for everyone.” said Clifton.
City Beach chief information officer Rhian Greenway says the company recognised eight years ago that the bespoke collection of systems that held City Beach in good stead since the 1980s were not equipped to deal with the evolving demands of customers and team members.
“It was apparent our technology stack lacked the stability and scalability required to meet customer expectations around reliability and efficiency, but also the needs of our staff,” said Greenway
“The stability provided by SD-WAN enabled a much stabler peak period across the retail network. This was significant because Australia recorded an unprecedented spike in online sales, he said.
City Beach will also introduce Microsoft Teams to its staff and Click and Collect services to its customers in the next six-months.
The company also plans to give headsets to employees that can scan customer orders and retrieve instant information about aisle and pit locations. This will allow staff to make faster deliveries and avoid mistakes during the packing and picking process.
The Macquarie rollout was cost-effective and provided City Beach with a stable and flexible technology base that has allowed it to thrive in the modern environment Greenway added
Juniper Networks A/NZ vice president and general manager Bruce Bennie says this is yet another example of an Australian household name reaping the benefits of our AI-driven solutions and industry-leading switches
“We’re eager to see how City Beach uses its access to a reliable network, visibility into the customer experience and digital engagement and analytics platform to improve its processes in the future,” said Bennie
In the 2021 financial year 9.1 million Australian households shopped online.
