Customer experience at its best
Global SD WAN at all locations
A modern network with high bandwidth is the prerequisite for a profitable company; Wempe recognises this. The traditional yet innovative family-run luxury jewellery company has implemented its global SD WAN project together with Colt.
The luxury sector aims to offer its customers exceptional shopping experiences, and Wempe is no exception. Founded in 1878, this luxury retailer delights an international clientele with exclusive jewellery and watches in over 30 shops worldwide. Its focus is on expert advice and impeccable service, including its offering of exclusive brands and expert repairs.
The number of IT applications and IT-supported processes in the Wempe shops has grown increasingly, and with it the need to ensure high-performance and fail-safe connectivity. The company wanted to fulfil this requirement and replace the existing internet connections with state-of-the-art connectivity with corresponding security components. At the same time, all locations were to be technologically standardised, and centralised management needed minimal internal administration, so they could focus on business as usual. Wempe ultimately decided in favour of a comprehensive SD WAN network structure that connects all of its shops onto one network.
“With Colt, we have a very reliable partner at our side. Despite our high security requirements and access restrictions due to the high-priced product range in our shops and the associated complexity, we have successfully implemented our project. Colt reacted flexibly to the individual circumstances at our locations and provided us with suitable solutions. We will also realise any new locations with Colt,” says Frank Hennigfeld, Chief Digital Officer at Gerhard D. Wempe GmbH & Co. KG.
During the first workshop with us in 2020, it became clear that a test connection of Wempe’s main location would be useful to enable a smooth rollout for the other connections. Using a test environment provided by Colt, produced within two weeks, the highly motivated Wempe IT team at its headquarters in Hamburg simulated the individual shops and their technical requirements. The retailer relies on a reliable point of sale (POS) transactional system, and wanted to refine the network concept they had developed themselves.
The effort paid off: Colt and Wempe were able to connect the first locations after just three weeks. By 2021, all shops were online, including its metropolitan locations in Madrid, London, Paris, Vienna and New York.
In Germany, connecting the former observatory in Glashütte was one of the highlights and also one of the biggest challenges. The current Saxon site for the production of the company’s own unique Chronometer product is located on a slope with rocky ground, where fibreoptic infrastructure first had to be laid. Other highlights included a shop on the island of Sylt and the Rolex boutique at Frankfurt Airport. All locations presented the challenge of individually required solutions, which the teams from Wempe and Colt were able to successfully solve together.
With a bandwidth of at least 100 Mbit/s in all shops worldwide, there are no limits to the possibilities in terms of in-store customer experience. The fibreoptic connection in the shops also provide customers with high-speed guest Wi-Fi. Thanks to the software-defined connection, Wempe has full freedom to control traffic as required (e.g. to cloud services, its own data centre, internet, etc.) and independently, according to requirements.
The retailer’s connectivity in all of its locations was replaced with fibreoptic and copper lines, and in some cases also with LTE and 5G, ensuring reliability. The next-generation firewalls from Colt installed in the SD WAN gateways protect the business from unauthorised access.
“Wempe is a traditional company in a very demanding industry that has developed extremely quickly in terms of technology in recent years and is consistently pursuing digitalisation. We value the trusting and constructive collaboration with Wempe’s highly professional IT team, which has led to rapid successes,” says Bernd Krause, Director Sales Indirect Channel DACH at Colt Technology Services, about the collaboration with Wempe.
COMPANY NAME
Gerhard D. Wempe GmbH & Co. KG
INDUSTRY
Jewellery and watch industry
CHALLENGE
Global SD WAN at all locations
COLT SOLUTION
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