Ballantynes has a proud history of retailing in Christchurch dating back to 1872 when John Ballantyne purchased the Christchurch store. Ballantynes is a Christchurch icon in retailing whose success is based on outstanding service and quality. Nowadays they have stores located in Central Christchurch, Christchurch Airport and Timaru plus international mail order and web site sales. The quality and retention of good staff is key to the business.
In times of change, Ballantynes have always been adept at adapting while at the same time preserving their focus on service and quality.
The Ballantynes challenge
With the addition of the Contemporary Lounge and Café, and expanding online sales and mail order, staff and administration functions had to overflow into nearby office space. Around 30 staff were located just across the road from the retail store, however this office may as well have been on the other side of town in terms of integration of communications and IT. Traditional services required a separate and expensive telephony solution and computers operated very slowly over a data connection to the head office. Christchurch Airport also suffered from the same challenges of distance, resulting in technology complexity and high cost to provide services to staff at that branch.
Enable Network’s solution
The EnableFIBRE solution was an ideal fit to solve the Ballantynes challenges. We worked with IT Manager Campbell Botting and his IT Integrator, Ian Burgess from The Total Team to come up with simple solutions. SNAP was also brought in to provide a Gigabit Internet solution over Enable Network fibre for the Ballantynes ecommerce operation and connections to the outside world. We provided point to point dark fibre links to the Cashel Mall satellite office and Airport branch for LAN and telephony requirements. Campbell has installed a Nortel CS1000E voice over IP (VOIP) capable PABX at the main office with remote VOIP extensions at the remote sites.
Benefits
The new communications and LAN services over EnableFIBRE have completely reduced the impact of distance. The remote admin office and Airport branches are connected at such high speed that they appear to all be operating from the same premises. In other words, a LAN connection has been provided across the city. The VOIP extensions at the satellite locations eliminate the need for multiple PABXs reducing costs for hardware, maintenance and local calls.
The high speed internet connection has significantly improved online performance and reduced costs. Large amounts of synchronization data is sent in real time now rather than evening (batch) updates. Remote access for staff working from home is also simplified through the SNAP internet solution, and performance is outstanding. There has been a very noticeable increase in the speed of online operations.
“The EnableFIBRE solution has allowed Ballantynes to provide very reliable and cost effective communications across all our locations and to the internet. This assists us to deliver outstanding customer service no matter which branch our customers visit.” Says Campbell Botting.
