Straitshot Intelligent Private networks are effective and reliable solutions for retail organizations. Application priority and dial backup are just a couple of the features that make Straitshot the right choice for retail.
Intelligent Retail: Bag'n Baggage Case Study
Conducting a Retail Business Offline
The nation's premier retailer of premium luggage, business cases and leather goods for more than 30 years, Bag'n Baggage has 275 employees in 34 locations across the United States. As a specialist in the retail industry, Bag'n Baggage offers its customers the highest level of customer service in the industry.
The Challenge:
Implement a cost-effective system allowing business to be conducted in real time
For more than 10 years, Bag'n Baggage used a dial-up solution that became inadequate as conducting business across 32 separate locations imposed ever greater networking requirements. The company struggled to publish sales reports, which ultimately affected restocking of merchandise in different locations, also, sales personnel found viewing real-time price changes a challenge. At times, the company even experienced email down time.
"We needed a wide area network solution that worked reliably," said Jim Tierney, Bag'n Baggage Vice President of Support Services. "We needed to conduct business in real time."
Determining the Solution Provider
Bag'n Baggage sought a partnership with a vendor that provided a high level of customer service as well as a cost-effective, high-speed, secure network capable of running the company applications in real time. After reviewing myriad wide-area networking solutions, Bag'n Baggage chose the Straitshot team and its Intelligent Private Network (IPN) to solve their connectivity problems.
"The quality of the solution and the level and diversity of experience within the Straitshot management team - with executives from telephone, routers, networking, and security - gave us reassurance that Straitshot's IPN Solution was the right fit for our company," said Tierney.
The Solution: Straitshot's Intelligent Private Network
Straitshot's IPN service provided Bag'n Baggage with a communication infrastructure that fit within their location/per month/per year budget and helped plan for company growth. Not only did it provide a high-speed secure network that allowed the company to run its applications in real time - without sending its information over the Internet - it also provided Bag'n Baggage with a foundation for future application usage without sacrificing quality of service (QoS) of calls or application performance.
For example, Bag'n Baggage's 2007 VoIP rollout will include IP packet prioritization, which will free incoming calls of the jitter and latency associated with running multiple, high-bandwidth applications in real time.
Using Straitshot's IPN, Bag'n Baggage now operates a dedicated network that ensures data remain separate and private when sent from location to location. Further, mission-critical application performance is guaranteed thanks to Straitshot's customized class-of service (CoS) prioritization settings, which are enforced throughout the network.
As well as providing customized intelligent private networks, Straitshot also guarantees bandwidth and offers end-to end service level agreements for jitter, latency and up time, thus ensuring the industry's leading quality of service (QoS) for real-time applications.
The Results: Benefits of Straitshot's IPN
With Straitshot's IPN, Bag'n Baggage employees could work more efficiently and conduct business in real time. For example, updating a database containing more than 500,000 names and addresses formerly took four to six weeks, but after the network conversion to Straitshot's IPN the same task took less than five minutes.
Bag'n Baggage also reduced the amount of time and costs associated with administrative duties. For example, allowing employees to send and receive e-mail greatly reduced long-distance telephony costs. The company also cut parcel delivery costs and increased efficiency by emailing spreadsheets and text documents.
Further still, fast transaction processing greatly enhanced Bag'n Baggage customer service. With the Straitshot IPN in place, per-transaction processing time was cut from more than a minute to only five seconds.
The Outcome
Bag'n Baggage completed implementation of the Straitshot system in 2005. "With the Straitshot system firmly in place, we have now launched our corporate intranet. The intranet has changed how we communicate and has opened doors to do things never imagined," said Tierney.
The company intranet is used as a single interface for communicating with employees and other internal partners. Bag'n Baggage has effectively eliminated paperwork and now handles virtually everything, from human resource matters to merchandising memos and training manuals electronically. New employees view training videos sent as needed over the corporate wide-area network. In addition, IP security cameras now allow district managers and corporate executives to survey entire stores, including back-office areas.
"This has proven to be a wonderful tool, practically with all new store set-ups. Our merchants can sit in the conference room or at their own desks and direct the layout. Straitshot brings Bag'n Baggage into the way business should be done in retail," said Tierney.
Industry leaders such as Bag'n Baggage, Pet's Choice and R.W. Beck rely on Straitshot solutions and are assured that the service will meet their needs today and into the future.
For more information about Bag'n Baggage please visit www.bagnbaggage.com