Success Stories

• Infrastructure
  • Craig and Hayward Ltd.
  • VMWARE
  • Howden Joinery Ltd.
• Public Sector

Howden Joinery Ltd.

Customer

Howden Joinery Ltd.

Industry

Manufacturing: kitchens and specialist joinery products. Howden Joinery principally serves small builders, whose own customers represent a significant proportion of the 'done for you' market for new kitchens. Since its foundation in 1995, Howdens has developed a business with more than 400 depots, supplying around 30 kitchen ranges plus bedrooms and joinery products to over 234,000 trade customers.

Business need

Hardware technological replacement and recovery and decommissioning of all legacy hardware.

A replacement point of sale system was required for the Howden Joinery business, because the needs of the depots had outstripped the functionality of the existing hardware and software. The K8 EPOS Conversion Project looked at the options for replacing the front end systems and the variety and complexity of the technology deployed across the depots. The focus was on reducing the breadth and diversity of the technology deployed, removing outdated, bespoke or unsupported components, and helping to reduce support and development costs.

Pacific Computers is Howdens’ our preferred IT partner, and was successfully awarded the project.

Pacific solution

The project was PC based and required a corresponding replacement of point of sale devices. The following key devices were critical to the conversion:

• Chip and Pin device
• Jet Direct Box
• Manage Switch

One of the key elements of the project was to minimise the downtime required to convert a Howden Joinery depot. The business objective was that trade should not be disrupted while engineers performed the hardware and configuration conversion, which was scheduled during normal trading hours.

The hardware conversion encompassed 433 depots and involved more than 17,000+components, including 1,500 PCs and Jet Direct boxes, and 776 Chip & Pin devices. All the devices required a complete configuration and test before they were despatched.

Business benefits

The conversion and successful commissioning of 433 depots was completed within 43 days without any disruptions. Hardware costs across the company have been reduced by £100,000.

Comments

“I would thoroughly recommend Pacific Computers to any company embarking on a complex project. They successfully delivered on the K8 hardware conversion project bang on time. Their overall management of the project was thoroughly professional from beginning to end.”

Martin Gillon Project Manager, Information Services Howdens Joinery

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