How an 85-location retailer standardized connectivity, hit 99.97% POS uptime, and cut network costs 35% — in 18 weeks.
Key Outcomes
The retailer had grown rapidly through new store openings and two acquisitions over five years. Network connectivity had been handled store-by-store, resulting in 85 locations with different carriers, different hardware, and different configurations — some dating back to the acquired companies.
The operational impact was constant. The IT helpdesk was fielding connectivity tickets from store managers multiple times per week. POS outages — even brief ones — were driving customer experience complaints and measurable lost sales during peak hours. Without centralized visibility, diagnosing and resolving issues required coordinating with multiple carrier support teams simultaneously.
Carrier contract consolidation had been on the IT roadmap for two years, but the complexity of managing 85 individual carrier relationships made it a project no one wanted to own.
ARG designed a standardized SD-WAN architecture that could be deployed consistently across all 85 locations regardless of the underlying carrier infrastructure. The design included automatic failover — each location would have a primary and backup circuit, with automatic switching in the event of a primary failure.
The carrier consolidation was handled through a single competitive RFP that addressed all 85 locations as a unified portfolio — giving the retailer leverage it could never have achieved negotiating store-by-store. ARG managed the transition from 85 individual carrier relationships to a single managed relationship.
Deployment was phased across 18 weeks, prioritizing highest-volume locations first. Each store cutover was scheduled during off-hours to avoid any impact to store operations.
Designed a standardized SD-WAN architecture for all 85 locations, including primary and failover circuit specifications, centralized management platform, and POS-specific network segmentation for PCI compliance.
Issued a unified RFP covering all 85 locations to leverage portfolio volume. Negotiated a single managed service agreement that reduced aggregate cost 35% and simplified vendor management from 85 relationships to one.
Deployed across all 85 locations over 18 weeks, prioritizing highest-volume stores in the first phase. All cutovers performed during off-hours with zero store operating hours impacted.
POS uptime across all 85 locations improved to 99.97% in the first 90 days post-deployment — up from an average that the IT team estimated at approximately 97.5% under the legacy infrastructure.
The IT helpdesk connectivity ticket volume dropped dramatically. What had been a constant source of store manager escalations became a non-issue.
The 35% cost reduction in aggregate connectivity spend was achieved despite adding redundant circuits at every location — a net improvement in both cost and reliability simultaneously.
“We went from managing 85 different carrier relationships and constant connectivity fires to having one point of contact and monitoring everything from a single dashboard. The POS uptime improvement alone was worth it.”