Top North American Grocery Chain Leverages Aruba Infrastructure to Improve Productivity and Provide a Better In-Store Mobile Environment for 205 stores
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE:HPE), today announced
that Weis Markets, a leading food retailer operating 205 stores in the
U.S., has standardized on Aruba wireless infrastructure to deliver
improved efficiencies, drive sales, and provide customers with a
top-notch mobile experience.
With a combined 11.5 million square feet of retail store, warehouse and
distribution center space, Weis Markets has consistently been ranked in
Supermarket News’ list of top 75 North American food retailers and
wholesalers. According to Jacob Koch, Manager of Systems Administration
for Weis Markets, employing a secure, high-performance wireless
infrastructure is critical to meeting the retailer’s key corporate
objectives.
“From an operational perspective, secure, high-performance Wi-Fi allows
our 23,000 store associates and 1,000 associates in distribution centers
and headquarters to ensure that correct products are purchased,
inventoried, selected and placed on retail shelves,” Koch noted. “From a
sales and service perspective, that same foundation will allow us to
offer better in-store mobile experiences for our customers, adopt more
sophisticated app services so we can push out offers via our mobile app,
and gain insights into our customers’ behaviors and needs.”
While Weis replaced their Cisco APs in 2014 and standardized on Aruba
Wi-Fi company-wide, the retailer determined that upgrading to Aruba’s
Gigabit Wi-Fi Instant APs would provide more robust connectivity, while
reducing costs and helping Weis support mobile-first shoppers and
associates. With approximately 5,000 APs deployed in Instant mode across
their 205+ stores, distribution and warehouse centers, and store support
center in Sunbury, PA., Weis was able to simplify wireless
infrastructure deployment and management, rather than placing a
controller in every location.
“Survivability was the primary driver for deploying Aruba Instant APs,”
Koch commented. “As we grow, Aruba’s controllerless model allows us to
quickly bring new stores online at a much lower cost.”
Within its distribution centers, Weis uses a combination of wireless
headsets and Honeywell’s Vocollect over the Aruba network to enable a
voice controlled product pick system that helps associates select
products quickly and easily. The increased picking accuracy results in a
higher percentage of correct product on store shelves, improving the
overall efficiency of Weis Markets’ inventory processes and ultimately,
impacting the retailer’s sales positively.
The addition of Aruba ClearPass
for unified wired and wireless Network Access Control (NAC), allows Weis
Markets to differentiate between corporate, personal, guest and – in the
future, IoT devices – on the network by adding more granular policy and
management capabilities. Combined with Aruba AirWave
network management, Koch says that Weis Markets’ network administration
team can make configuration changes and update software across all of
their stores’ Instant APs quickly and easily. AirWave’s reporting
functions enable fast identification of excessive resource usage,
verification of PCI compliance, and discovery of hardware inventory
information. Robust alerting allows the team to identify any AP issues,
rogue devices or network problems so they can be quickly resolved.
With its Aruba network in place, Weis has not only reduced costs and
improved efficiencies, but has also gained a competitive advantage with
customers – approximately 6,000 of whom connect to the in-store guest
Wi-Fi daily.
“We leveraged AirWave to create a guest wireless SSID by applying a
single configuration change on our APs that we advertise to our
customers,” explained Koch. “This gives us an advantage, compared to our
competitors, who might only offer wireless in a café area. Customers can
download and use our app anywhere in the store without having to move to
the cellular network and thereby, experience faster response times.”
The Aruba network is preparing Weis Markets for their future IT
initiatives, as well. Koch noted that once they have completed their AP
upgrades, they plan to adopt analytics software that will help them
uncover customer habits so they can better respond to customer needs
and, ultimately, drive increased sales. In addition, Weis will evaluate
the use of push notifications to send relevant coupons and offers to
customers who authenticate to the network. Other future initiatives
might include digital product pricing on shelves, asset tracking for
grocery carts, and even robots for in-store clean-ups.
Said Koch, “With our Aruba infrastructure we can examine all of these
initiatives, as we’re confident the network will enable us to continue
innovating and improving.”
About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a leading provider of
next-generation networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes
worldwide. The company delivers IT solutions that empower organizations
to serve the latest generation of mobile-savvy users who rely on
cloud-based business apps for every aspect of their work and personal
lives.
To learn more, visit Aruba at
http://www.arubanetworks.com
.
For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook,
and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products
visit Airheads Social at
http://community.arubanetworks.com
.
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Pavel Radda, +1-408-419-0294
pavel.radda@hpe.com
or
Lori Hultin, +1-818-879-4651
lori.hultin@hpe.com