Look and feel #Amazing with Decjuba
‘Delivering #Amazing’ – that’s the drive behind one of Australia’s favourite fashion retailers, Decjuba. With 140 stores across ANZ, and three fashion ranges for women and girls, Decjuba aims to be the ‘go-to destination for fashion to make you look and feel #Amazing’. But Decjuba is not just another fashion retailer – founder and CEO Tania Austin has a mission to impact people and the planet. Through the Decjuba Foundation, the company is committed to long-term partnerships with charitable organisations and has a goal to impact 25 million lives by 2025. The Decjuba Sustainability Strategy focuses on becoming one of Australia’s most sustainable and responsible fashion labels.
The distraction of ‘noise’
Decjuba is a retailer with drive and vision – and wants to focus on its goals for customers and community. Issues that detract from those goals must be resolved – including IT systems that hamper rather than enhance operations.
GM of Technology at Decjuba, Steven Crisapulli, explains: ‘Not long after I came to Decjuba, IT was given the brief to ‘Kill the noise’. There were a few niggles impacting the stores, distracting staff from focussing on making customers and stores #Amazing.’
‘As any IT person will tell you, the best technology systems are the ones that just work – the ones you don’t even notice are there. But some of our systems weren’t as efficient as they could have been. They impacted the stores, and my team had to spend time managing them, so they were noticeable - for all the wrong reasons.’
After a thorough review, Steven realised that the network and the phone system had scope to be made more efficient.
The importance in retail of a reliable and flexible network
‘In retail, you really rely on your network - especially when, like us, you have a cloud-based point of sale (POS) application. Losing the network makes trading difficult for our stores, particularly in this era of contactless payments. There is a very tangible connection in today’s retail world between infrastructure and how we make money. We had a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network, which was not always reliable. When there were failures, the network became a big source of ‘noise’. It impacted the way store staff served customers, and it took valuable IT resources to fix.’
‘Along with reliability, the other network issue was flexibility – we move, refurbish, and open new stores quite frequently – we’ve grown from 110 to 140 stores across ANZ in the few years I have been here. We also set up pop-up stores for key events, such as International Women’s Day. Getting a new store onto the network was a time-consuming process – sometimes up to six to eight weeks. Retail simply doesn’t always have that sort of lead time to play with, so again, it had a direct impact on our ability to offer the level of service we wanted for our customers.’
Failing phones
The phone system was a simple VOIP box with a portable ‘home phone’ and base station. The handsets were at times unreliable, and it would not be unusual, across the business, for a device to fail every few weeks. This left them unable to make and receive calls, and again, took up a lot of IT resource to manage.
Calling in the experts
Steven had previously worked with Phil Cahn, JB Hi-Fi Business’ Strategic Business Development Manager, so he asked Phil to suggest a solution to Decjuba’s network and phone issues. ‘Phil was quick to come up with a solution that worked well’, says Steven. ‘For the network, he proposed a software defined wide area network (SD-WAN), using Cisco’s Meraki solution. The solution is ISP agnostic – and we selected to implement it with our strategic ISP provider.’
‘For the phone system, the proposed solution was based on Cisco’s Webex Calling platform. Our original requirement was for straightforward voice calls, and the system gives us that, but with Webex, we’ve also got an interactive voice response (IVR) solution at no extra cost. We asked for something basic, but for the price of that basic system, we’ve got something really quite powerful’.’
JB Hi-Fi Business provided the hardware, the ISP services, the pre-sales support to carry out the detailed design and planning, the implementation and configuration, and end to end project management.
‘SD-WAN is one of those technologies that once you start using it, you think ‘I wish we had done this earlier’.
The benefits of the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN network
Steven is delighted with the solution and the difference it has made to managing Decjuba’s network. ‘SD-WAN is so much easier to set up and use than anything else I have ever used. It’s one of those technologies that, once you start using it, you think ‘I wish we had done this earlier.’
Phil Cahn agrees: ‘SD-WAN is such a game-changer in terms of the simplicity of delivery and management. Decjuba is now easily flexing up and down stores, which was difficult with MPLS.’
SD-WAN offers Decjuba multiple benefits compared to their MPLS network:
- Simplicity – because the SD-WAN uses a software defined, virtualised connection that is not tied to a physical connection from a specific vendor, it is simpler and faster to implement.
- Flexibility – the new network is flexible enough to adapt and grow with the business, rather than being a source of delay. It also gives Decjuba the option of switching ISPs, which may be required at times due to deployment timeliness or availability constraints for particular sites.
- Speed - Decjuba can now send out a ‘Store in a box’, with a computer and router that branches can rapidly set up themselves. Lead times for new stores have reduced from weeks to being virtually immediate with Telstra 4G.
- Reliability – the Meraki-based SD-WAN has reduced network downtime ‘significantly’, and the IT team can go weeks without seeing an alert on their network monitoring dashboard, something that previously occurred multiple times a day.
- Failover speed – in the rare cases where the regular internet connection does fail, the cutover to the Telstra 4G is smooth and efficient, and not even noticeable in most cases by the store.
- Manageability – the Cisco Meraki solution provides a centralised, cloud hosted management platform, integrating LAN, WAN, telephony and wireless in a common Meraki dashboard providing better visibility and troubleshooting. This integration streamlines management, saves time, and ensures that the entire network remains reliable and secure.
- Reduced Business as Usual (BAU) effort – with the reduction in networking issues, Steven has been able to minimise the effort his team wastes on outages and redirect their focus to ensuring the network remains reliable and secure.
- Freedom – the simplicity of the SD network means that Decjuba’s IT team can easily manage any small changes without external help.
- Security – Meraki routers enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), adding an extra layer of security to LAN access. Meraki's centralized interface simplifies MFA implementation, making it a breeze to set up and manage for multiple devices and users.
The power of Cisco Webex
The phone system and Cisco handsets have been just as much of a success, and have also driven significant business benefits:
- Robustness – Webex Calling integrated with Meraki resulted in a significant boost in the robustness and reliability of the communication solution. Decjuba phone failures have reduced from a week to one in a year – which was quickly fixed under warranty.
- IVR functionality – the IVR allows Decjuba to reroute general calls (such as enquiries about opening times, sizing or stock) to customer service. The deep integration with Webex, the customisability, and scalability of the IVR solution is so successful that Decjuba are planning to use it to build a customer hotline.
- Focus on customers – with a reduced number of calls to the store, staff have more time to focus on making customers look and feel #Amazing.
‘‘We like the fact that JB Hi-Fi knows retail and gets how important our stores are to us’.
Finding the perfect partner
The decision to turn to JB Hi-Fi for the solution was also a key factor in the success of the project, says Steven. ‘We like the fact that JB Hi-Fi knows retail and gets how important our stores are to us. Attention to detail and taking time to really understand the requirement is so important – and JB Hi-Fi Business did just that. From pre-sales engineers to project management to set up and configuration, JB Hi-Fi Business is knowledgeable from end to end’.
From ‘noise’ to undistracted focus
For Decjuba, the transformation of their network and phone systems has had significant impacts - from the leadership team to the stores. Steven explains: ‘Issues that impact trade are reviewed by the executive team each week, and then flow down to us in IT. Now that the network and phones are more efficient and reliable, there has been a notable decrease in reports of issues from stores. So, it’s made a positive impact at all levels. Now that that the ‘noise’ has largely gone, the whole company has more time and headspace to focus on our big goals: #Amazing customer service; impacting 25 million lives; and being a sustainable fashion label.’