Service Merchandise Orders Bandwidth Improvements
As it prepares to exit Chapter 11 reorganization, retailer ServiceMerchandise Co. is deploying new bandwidth-management software to
fuel a project designed to boost sales and improve customer
service by bringing fast Web access to its nationwide chain of 221
stores.
The company had decided to put multiple NCR Corp. kiosks in each
of its stores to let shoppers access its Web site for additional
product information, order and buy products that aren't sold in
the stores, and find other outlets with the desired items.
But a trial run revealed that it took roughly 30 seconds for a Web
page to appear on a kiosk. So Service Merchandise turned to Flash
Networks for software unveiled last week that uses data
acceleration, traffic-flow-control, and compression features to
drive that time down to less than five seconds.
"We needed to implement technology that would enable innovation in
our business so that no shopper wasted a store visit and left
unhappy," says Danny Schunk, VP of IT for Service Merchandise,
based in Brentwood, Tenn. "Thirty seconds was clearly
unacceptable."
Flash Networks' NettGain Web and site-server software fit the bill
because it reduces the amount of bandwidth for existing traffic,
while other vendors' wares focus on traffic prioritization, says
Laurent Guengant, a senior analyst with consulting firm
TeleChoice. "Reducing required bandwidth means you get faster
response times and can handle more transactions."
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