Worcestershire-based garden centre assures communications with head office to increase sales agility
Worcestershire-based garden centre assures communications with head office to increase sales agility
Horticultural retailer, Webbs Garden Centre has successfully implemented a new virtual private network (VPN) at its store in West Hagley, Worcestershire, in order to send real time data from store to its head office.
The VPN line, provided by retail communications solutions provider Vodat International, will enable the retailer to send all reports from the store back to the head office, including sales updates and stock levels. Head office can also send information directly to the store’s electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) such as promotions, price changes and new items and offers.
The retailer has also used the VPN line for its five temporary pop-up Christmas store, which sold gifts throughout the festive period across the Midlands area. Updates were fed back to head office, allowing the retailer to keep track of sales and stock levels.
Business speed and continuity
Mike Davis, Webbs IT manager, said: “We didn’t have a network in place and held sales and stock information locally, and we would send a file across regularly. I decided that we needed to have a secure network in place in order to send this confidential information to the head office and when evaluating the market we came across Vodat International. We have been extremely pleased with the service Vodat has provided. The system is very reliable, and was delivered to us on time.”
Davis added: “What’s great about the VPN line is that if a problem occurs on one of our tills, head office is sent an alert and this allows our engineers to log on remotely, meaning they can act quickly and reduce the downtime in our store. We also use the VPN line to manage the credit card authorisation meaning the payments process at the till is very fast and customers are served quickly making the shopping experience an enjoyable one.”
Future plans include rolling out the VPN line to its one additional store later this year.
