Global Network Transformation for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Enterprise

Challenge

In November 2018, a Global FMCG company made the decision to invest significantly in their core network, due to an inconsistent end-user experience in several of their locations across the globe. It was evident that network performance, speed and capacity needed to be improved to maintain a competitive advantage and to support the company's growth strategy.

Many of their locations suffered from areas of poor Wi-Fi coverage, or indeed pockets of zero coverage, which hampered employee productivity and output. The company started planning this multi-year effort for a global Infrastructure Network Upgrade Program, focusing on improving their end user's experience within their businesses.

World Wide Technology Professional Services: The partner of choice

The customer conducted an extensive and rigorous RFP exercise to evaluate which global partner would be best placed to deliver on their requirements and to deploy at scale, velocity and quality. WWT's proven track record in delivering complex infrastructure programs for global financial and enterprise customers enabled us to return a response that assured the customer that we would be able to meet and even exceed demands.

The customer realized that WWT was uniquely positioned to deliver successfully, due to the depth and breadth of their global infrastructure practice and their global coverage model of subject matter experts, which is bolstered with the support of our extensive partner ecosystem. 

For the customer, the right partner had to execute to exacting standards and methodology, yet equally needed to be flexible to meet the changing demands of their business; this is where WWT comes into its own.

Solution

The customer chose WWT to initially deploy 50 sites globally — since then we have been awarded many more sites and have successfully transformed in excess of 150 sites. As the global deployment ramped up, it became evident to the customer that WWT's programmatic approach and their focus on Continuous Service Improvement (evolving their deployment model to consider lessons learned through each implementation) enabled improvements throughout each successive phase of deployment and site migration.

Equally, it was evident that WWT's core values were closely aligned to the customer's own corporate values. This enabled an incredibly strong partnership to develop with WWT, the customer and their respective partner organizations, building trust and working together in harmony to achieve and improve results.

Plant deployment: Poland

In a normal world, delivering complex infrastructure projects successfully presents a significant challenge, however with the COVID-19 pandemic, global semi-conductor shortages, Brexit movement restrictions and added border and site admission challenges, WWT was once again ready to pivot and adjust to the ever-changing landscape to deliver a significant site in Poland. In January 2022, WWT went to work as planned and used tried and tested delivery methods within EMEA, to deliver another successful site transformation.

Deployment scope:

• Deployment window of 72 hours over 3 days with 16 WWT resources on-site for the duration of the change window.
• Wireless network coverage over 1 Million sq. feet from plant production to general offices resulting in a 300 percent performance improvement.
• Successfully returned the plant to operations within a given window.

Going into this cutover, with WWT's extensive experience of deployments within this program, and having already deployed 64 sites across EMEA, we knew we could meet the challenges. By applying the lessons learned from previous transformations, we sent a forward team to the site a month ahead of the deployment to ensure all remediation was up to standard. Although we were still chasing down hardware delivery at this time, utilizing our supply chain expertise, we adopted a flexible approach, relocating inventory from other locations and backfilling, to facilitate the deployment within the change window without impacting any site schedules within the program.

Results

Despite the scale of the site and the complexity of the logistics and resourcing that needed to be rearranged, WWT was able to re-plan the deployment several times to accommodate the plant's changing downtime scheduling but ultimately meet the customers' downtime window. The rescheduled cutover was completed in 3 days and was a huge success, without disruption to the customer's services.

Enabling transformation was a team of highly skilled project management and engineering resources:

• Regional Program Manager and Global Portfolio Management Office
• Project Manager
• Engineering Architect
• Lead Engineer
• Supporting Core Team of Engineers
• Partner Engineers (Rack & Stack)

This customer quotation which followed the deployment really underscores the importance of the partnership with WWT, of which we are truly proud.

Dear WWT Team, 

What a fabulous result!

Congratulations to another professional and flawless deployment.

The Poland site is a huge and comprehensive plant and you mastered the challenges associated with such complexity with bravura. While joining the bridge I could witness your full commitment and personal engagement! You smartly managed local procurement of missing fibers in time and the pandemic situation could not harm you. Be proud of that big accomplishment and milestone achievement! 

Next steps to success

If you need support with driving infrastructure and IT Service Transformation, reach out to us today. We would welcome a discussion to understand how we can support you to optimize your business.