Leekes, the Welsh-based retailer that offers everything for the home, including furniture, kitchens, bathrooms, and all the finishing touches, was established over 125 years ago. It boasts four large format department stores across South Wales, the West Country and the Midlands, along with a home improvement centre located where it all started, in the South Wales valleys in 1897.
The Challenges
Leekes was looking for a single cohesive solution across all sites that would deliver highly available connectivity, the ability to centralise application control, security policies across the whole estate, and prioritise business applications for business continuity. All previous connectivity was provided by a variety of ISPs with different speeds and end-user experiences. This was self-managed and presented a challenge to the business.
The SCG Solution
SCG worked with Leekes to understand the underlying business requirements and design the most appropriate solution. This design included highly available connectivity, diverse carriers, and the ability to load balance all business-critical traffic. The Wide Area Network was overlaid with 24/7 proactive monitoring to expedite the resolution of any service disruption. The project deployment was carefully considered to mitigate any disruption to daily operations. As Leekes is a retailer, there are minimal windows available to cease any service to facilitate a cut-over. As a result, the project was phased to deploy all central services first, before proceeding with a scheduled site installation over two months. A dedicated project manager orchestrated the process, and provided Leekes with regular updates and weekly review meetings. At each stage, the options to pause and revert were in place to ensure minimal business disruption.
