Caffyns
Creating high quality secure connectivity across 18 dealerships to enhance customer, sales and servicing capability.
Caffyns, one of the longest-established car dealerships in the world, offering new and used car sales from 18 locations across Kent and Sussex. Franchise partnerships with prestige brands include Audi Volkswagen and Volvo.
The company relies on technology as a means to deliver an enriched customer and staff experience, to link to manufacturer business systems and tools, and to deliver a digital customer retail experience, including video and 3D modelling.
I really trust Ideal – they completed the project under pressure with no disruption. As a result we have a faster network, greater resilience and decreased security risks.
Poor infrastructure performance and reliability were becoming obstacles to Caffyns’ business objectives.
The company realised that satisfying the growing demands on its IT infrastructure and consolidating the disparate legacy systems of its multi-manufacturer environment would require a fundamental overhaul of its IT estate.
Ideal conducted a detailed audit of the existing network and worked with Caffyns to draw up an IT roadmap which would provide the performance, availability and security needed. A key requirement was to upgrade the network across all sites without causing interruption to the business.
At each site, legacy network equipment was first upgraded with Cisco Meraki wireless networking and Cisco switched infrastructure, providing reliable access to a consistent LAN backbone.
Linking the sites with Cisco’s SD-WAN technology, then provided software-defined routing to enable high performance from a far lower cost base.
Finally, two new identical data centres were built in separate dealerships to ensure high availability and business continuity for critical data, applications and services.
Caffyns has the robust, secure and future-proof network it needs to support continued growth, and to enable its increasingly technology-led business strategy.
Across the group’s IT estate, performance and availability are far improved, while costs have been lowered.
Increasing internet bandwidth and segregating guest connectivity within the Meraki wireless network has enabled ‘blended retailing’, with high-definition tablet content supporting the customer buying process.
