Infosystems: No Need To Stop While You Shop
Customers purchasing gas or food from Wawa stores in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland or Virginia sometimes had to wait more than 40 seconds to have credit card charges approved over the company's dial-in modem network. Collecting the daily sales and other data from company stores was taking about six hours each night.
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Infosystems' Richard Roux
Enter network integrator Infosystems. "They engaged us to do an extensive technology assessment for them and make recommendations for not only how they would deploy technology into their stores, but what core infrastructure would support their network," said Richard Roux, executive vice president of Infosystems, Wilmington, Del.
Infosystems found a mishmash of technology deployed at individual stores with few standards to collect and transmit data. The backbone of the existing technology was a dial-up connection to a central database that exposed a single point of failure, Roux said.
"We recommended a frame relay network that put edge routers out to the individual stores, [using a combination of LAN technology and wireless technology to scan inventory and process credit transactions," he said.
Infosystems recommended a switch-100 Ethernet platform with redundancy. Backbone technology for the system included Enterasys Networks switches and the X-Pedition Security Router, XSR-1805. The XSR-1805 is a desktop-mounted IP router designed for branch-office locations and comes bundled with VPN and firewall technology.
"There was really no middleware or system hardware involved," said Peter Pieranunzi, network specialist at Infosystems. "We gave them a dedicated path [to the credit authorization company. What we did was improve the remote-access infrastructure and store-dedicated infrastructure to do the processing."
Infosystems did its technology assessment for Wawa in spring 2001 and began rolling out the new network in April 2002. Pieranunzi said it takes a two-man Infosystems' team about four hours to convert a Wawa store to the new system.
ANATOMY OF A SOLUTION
>> COMAPNY: Infosystems, Wilmington, Del.
>> FOCUS: Networking and outsourcing services.>> PROBLEM: Wawa Food Markets needed a secure and reliable industry-standard network to transmit data from its more than 500 convenience stores to a centralized database.
>> PRODUCT and SERVICES USED: Frame relay network, Enterasys Networks switches and XSR-1805 X-Pedition Security Router.
>> LESSONS LEARNED:
• Stress common corporate culture, local presence and hands-on service.
• Listen to needs and requirements but don't be afraid to offer alternatives if the customer apprears to be heading in the wrong direction.
• Recommend solid technical solutions that make economic sense for the customer.
With the new dedicated network, store processing time has dropped to less than two hours per day, and credit card transaction authorizations now take an average of less than three seconds.
Infosystems brought more than a technical fix to the table, said Marty Maglio, Wawa's director of IT architecture.
"We needed to have a company come in and assess our business and our needs for the future and where the industry was going from a network architecture perspective," he said. "We needed someone to partner with us in the network arena to help us implement a new network and be a partner with us going forward in the architecture area."
Maglio said Infosystems and Wawa share a similar family-owned regional company culture, which is one of the reasons Wawa did not award the job to a national systems integrator.
"When we look at vendors, we are looking to see how they fit into our culture and how they are going to help us as a partner rather than someone who is going to come in and do an implementation then go away," Maglio said. "That's why Infosystems stood out. What kept us away from the big players is we didn't want to be a small fish in a big pond. We needed someone that was going to help us on a daily basis because we were embarking on stuff that we had never done before."
Photography by Jeffrey Prehn.