Moss Bros VoIP migration cuts costs

Men's retailer and formal clothing firm, Moss Bros, is cutting the cost of its store communications and improving transaction and process efficiency with internet protocol (IP) telephony upgrade.

The company has already saved at least £60,000 on the cost of its base infrastructure to its 150 stores with the IP virtual private network (VPN) migration and saved 10 per cent on its voice calling and postal budget as a result of an increased reliance on email for essential store communications.

Dave Evans, Moss Bross IT technical project manager said the move to its new VPN network, hosted by Pipex Business, is also underpinning business expansion overseas and better store, transaction and stock handling procedures.

"We used to have an ISDN network and looked to upgrade the infrastructure a couple of years ago when we started to replace our point-of-sale systems," Evans told IT PRO. "When we looked at introducing new till hardware and software, it was more cost-efficient and less risky to go for an outsourcing provider."

With savings already realised since Moss Bros went live on the Pipex infrastructure last March, Evans adds that they are now looking to move the service on and reduce costs further.

"We are now looking at migrating our core network, as we've just opened our first non-UK store, which doesn't come in over our BT cloud," he said. This, and other UK stores affected by the same issue will be able to connect seamlessly to the new core network to take advantage of the VPN functionality.

Another of those key advantages is the ability to access real time sales updates and stock enquiries across the business, which "obviously allows us to offer a better service to customers," adds Evans. "There's a lot more to the business benefits than just cost savings - there are fairly serious 'soft' benefits as well, around real-time visibility of the data and the network."

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