How Microland enhanced customer experience at retail stores of one of the world’s largest tire manufacturers through technology transformation

Overview

The customer is the world’s largest tire manufacturer with 25 million tires sold annually and has a global presence with over 180+ production facilities across 24 countries.

Business Challenge

The tire manufacturer faced challenges with the customer experience and employee productivity at their 2,300+ retail stores in the US. This was primarily due to traditional network infrastructure that adversely impacted the connectivity of the stores and retail sales teams to the ERP and PoS systems. Customers did not have a seamless, omnichannel experience which affected revenue recognition and overall customer satisfaction.

To address these issues, the tire manufacturer embarked on an end-to-end transformation journey to upgrade their WAN, LAN, voice, and network security at retail outlets.

Solution

Based on the pain points and business objectives communicated by the customer, Microland recommended Fortinet’s SD-Branch and SASE solution to the customer. Our well-thought-through transformation plan was centered around leveraging the Intelligeni NetOps Platform, our in-house developed platform, and considered all the necessary requirements like minimal impact on the operations of the retail store,
transformation velocity peaking at 20 to 25 stores per day, and blackout days and times. Intelligeni NetOps Platform accelerated the SD-Branch transformation through pre-built HLD and LLD templates, site architecture templates on Fortinet SD-Branch solution, automating technical tasks, workflow integration, and collaboration across multiple stakeholders.

Some of the solutions delivered using our Intelligeni Transform module include:

• Site configurations are generated within seconds from pre-defined configuration templates by Intelligeni Bots for Fortinet SD-Branch solution, based on size classification to eliminate human error and to save a great deal of time on scripting. The configuration generated was for the entire suite of gear including Fortinet’s SD-WAN+SASE Edge, switches, wireless access points, IP phones, and voice gateway.
• Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) - Plug and play of hardware at the sites without the requirement of an onsite engineer to configure and provide access to the remote network team thereby saving over 12,000 hours and more importantly reducing migration window and downtime for all stores.
• Post Deployment Testing of installed cabling and network gear without any onsite dependency through automated UAT. Intelligeni Bots were used to confirm the success of test cases, automated diagnostics and remediation were executed on failed test cases, and any unresolved issues were highlighted to engineering teams thus paving the way for rapid issue resolution.

Business Outcome

• Projected savings of over a million USD for the customer during transformation through reduction of project management efforts by up to 40%, and reduction in project time and costs by 20%
• Faster time to market by accelerating the transformation through automation and elimination of human errors by up to 20%
• Improved in-store experience for end customers through seamless network connectivity to business applications and faster processing of services and orders