How Specsavers networked 100 new retail stores in 100 days

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 17 February 2009 01:53

IT Industry - Market

Since Specsavers, the largest privately owned optical group in the world, entered the Australian retail market last year it has rolled out 163 retail stores, all with broadband Internet access for connections to head office. To achieve this it has relied on the multicarrier approach provided by Reliance Globalcom.

Following the opening of its first store in Melbourne in February it opened its first 100 in 100 days. For this achievement the Specsavers IT team was awarded Retail Systems Magazine 'IT Team of the Year 2008' award and the 'Retail Systems Award 2008 - Overall Winner' honour.

"Each store required a communications connection on a specific day, usually a Monday, Simon Baxter Specsavers' director of IT, Asia Pacific, told iTWire. "Sometimes there was no copper there and Reliance came up with a wireless solution that enabled us to get the same quality of communication. That stayed there for as little as a day to as long as six months."

Tim Sullivan, Reliance Globalcom Australasia's managing director, said: "We contract with all the main players here and we used a number of different wireless carriers as well. [To provide wireless broadband] we used a device [3G broadband wireless router] from Sarian] that works particularly well." He added "We take a carrier agnostic view on the circuits and we do the same with the equipment."

Specsavers Australia was the first country able to fully exploit a global five year contract signed by its UK parent with the former Vanco global virtual network operator, acquired by Reliance in 2008.

"Globally Australia has been the fastest rollout and the first country to use the full raft of Reliance Globalcom services but these are now rolling into the UK and elsewhere [replacing existing contracts]" Baxter said. "We were lucky to be the first cab of the rank wholly under the Reliance contract...I hear stories of woe from the Nordic countries [where other providers are used]."

Each retail store has been provided with an 8Mbps DSL service used primarily for communication to Specsavers' IT systems. Internet access is also provided through a central firewall and the company is experimenting with WebEx collaboration tools. However each store has been left to make its own arrangements for telephone services. Baxter explained that the majority were separate joint ventures with an optician or retail partner.

The first Specsavers store opened in the UK in 1984 where the company now claims a 39 percent share of the optical market, three times that of its nearest competitor.

To date much of Australia has been spared from its competitive threat: of its 163 stores 65 are in Melbourne alone and many of the remainder in Victoria. That, however, is about to change. It is planning to roll out 100 additional retail outlets, business support and manufacturing facilities in Australia and New Zealand. Baxter said the company did not presently have a strong presence NSW and that the state, and particularly Sydney, would be a major target of the expansion.