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Global IP Infrastructure Keeps Refrigeration Leader Close to its Customers

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Industry Focus

Manufacturer of food refrigeration and product displays

Size

Annual Sales of $510 million (400 million euro)

Networking Solution

MPLS network enables worldwide expansion and helps Epta anticipate and meet customer requirements

Business Value

Flexibility, reliability and one point of contact simplify business processes and strengthen Epta's ability to be a market leader

About Our Customer

Epta Group, a multinational leader in supplying high-quality retail food refrigeration and product displays, traces its origins to the acquisition of an Italian refrigeration company by the Nocivelli family in 1986. Over the next decade the Nocivellis acquired six more well established companies throughout Europe, and renamed its company Epta, the Greek word for seven. Today Epta Group is a reliable global partner for international retailers with 2500 employees, a worldwide market presence and annual sales of 400 million euro ($510 million).

Situation

Acquiring new companies enabled Epta to offer the best product assortment, service and value to customers, but also required significant organizational and network integration. As Epta grew, company officials needed to manage multiple locations in Europe, China and South America that were supported by several different carriers. In addition, demanding customers presented further challenges. Because of the highly competitive and time-sensitive nature of the retail industry, supermarket clients often place orders with Epta only weeks before they expect delivery of custom storage and refrigeration units. Flexible and timely communication is critical to meet their needs. Epta required one global provider with the expertise to replace its disparate networks and accommodate ongoing growth. The company looked to enhance responsiveness to its customers' requests and better manage bandwidth utilization by ensuring that important operations had top priority.

Solution

Epta locates its manufacturing facilities near its customers in order to provide timely and cost effective deliveries and service. With AT&T Enhanced Virtual Private Network Services (Enhanced VPN), Epta gets the simplicity of dealing with a single global provider whose reliable infrastructure can serve current facilities as well as additional locations in countries where the company plans to expand. Thanks to the MPLS-based network, crucial applications for customizing product designs and customer service can take priority with ample bandwidth available to support them. The company now also has new options to control communications costs, such as running Voice over Enhanced VPN, while planning for future technology requirements without tying up staff in managing multiple carriers.

Strategic Locations Optimize Success

Enhanced VPN supports Epta Group's international expansion with flexibility that enhances seamless integration of assets whenever Epta acquires a company or opens a new office or production plant. "Our strategy has been to enter new markets and gain control of them," said Fabrizio Lunghi, Epta Group Organization and Quality Director.

The company's network supports this growth strategy by providing a robust infrastructure that provides any-to-any connectivity. "Every time we grow, the network has been able to integrate the acquisitions," he said. Enhanced VPN helps ensure high network availability for all sites. "We require a high-performing system. That's why our network is vital," Mr. Lunghi said. "It provides speedier transactions, with faster connections and fewer interruptions, which had been a problem we faced before."

Today Epta's network links eight strategically located manufacturing plants in Europe. The location of these plants – close to its customers – increased Epta's cost-efficiency and speed and made it a market leader. Proximity enables the company to guarantee speed of delivery for installation, maintenance and replacement parts and helps Epta better understand and satisfy customers' needs. This has meant an advantageous reduction in delivery times and transportation costs, which can be very high due to the size and fragility of the refrigeration units, display systems and checkout counters Epta produces.

The infrastructure also connects 17 office locations in Europe, including company headquarters in Milan, "We need a network that enables us to control global operations from a central location, and we expect benefits in terms of network performance," Mr. Lunghi said. "Our ultimate goals are reliability, a unique network partner and flexibility so we can satisfy our customers."

Responding Nimbly to Customer Needs

Epta customers are typically large supermarkets or hypermarkets, which are huge self-service retail outlets that often look like warehouses. Construction time for one of these facilities is usually five to six months, but the owners often don't make a decision about the refrigeration units and lighted displays they will need until five or six weeks before the store is set to open.

Enhanced VPN allows the organization to adapt easily to satisfy customers' requests for innovative solutions that take into account ergonomics, function, energy savings and image. "By the time they decide which type of cabinet, the aesthetics and the layout for point of sales displays, we don't have much time to react. Real configuration is completed only two to three weeks before the opening. That's why flexibility is our theme."

Epta engineers now have all the bandwidth they need to collaborate on complex applications required to design and manufacture custom products. "The systems controlling the plants and their production capacities vary a lot, so the network is very important," Mr. Lunghi said. "Our network gives us the flexibility we need."

Enhanced VPN supports the company's efforts in each of its locations, by helping Epta meet unique customer requirements in different parts of the world. "In mature markets like Western Europe, the customer is looking for top-level products with quite high levels of quality and performance," he said. In developing markets where cost is the primary consideration, customers usually choose more basic products.

Epta's network helps satisfy customers throughout the globe by enabling the company's employees to communicate design and production requirements; in fact, each of its plants worldwide can manufacture Epta's entire product range.

Seeking a Competitive Advantage

Epta looks to be forward-thinking, responsible corporate citizens responsive to environmental concerns. The company takes pride in its position as an environmental leader, anticipating trends toward ecology and energy savings and pioneering the use of renewable energy sources such as carbon dioxide. Its network enables employees to conduct research into solutions that will allow a better use of resources, reduced environmental pollution and sustainable global development.

The network also supports collaboration among Epta engineers and other experts who are conducting this important research. In the past, the company lacked the ability to allocate bandwidth to support its most important operations. As users accessed programs simultaneously, the congestion sometimes disrupted application performance. When the network does not perform well, it's more difficult to meet customer needs.

Now Epta's network prioritizes vital operations with Class of Service, a feature of MPLS networking that lets Epta differentiate traffic types competing for network capacity. The network's architecture helps ensure that real-time traffic such as Voice over Enhanced VPN and critical business applications such as SAP and design programs have priority over email, web browsing and other less important traffic. As Epta deploys other services like videoconferencing over its IP network and further expands the use of managed voice beyond its current eight sites, the network will have the power to prioritize applications to best handle business needs.

Global Reach with a Single Point of Contact

Epta Group used several providers before choosing one global networking provider to consolidate its networks. The company chose AT&T because of its worldwide presence – important to a company with aggressive international growth plans – and the wide range of services it provides. "One reason to move to AT&T was to get a unique provider for data and where possible for fixed telecommunications," he said.

The availability of AT&T's Enhanced VPN was another important consideration. "Our vision is to be a reliable global partner," Mr. Lunghi said. "Obviously the reliability of the network is highly important, and that's why we chose AT&T – because of the well established worldwide network and because of the competence."

"The network is such a vital part of our business because we cannot do anything without it. It's a critical part of our daily activities," he said. A high-performing, reliable network is required to run proprietary applications, as well as programs to manage financial, production operations, personnel, plants, and archived documents.

Epta has a sophisticated risk recovery plan to protect its critical data, but counts on the stability of Enhanced VPN. "We judged AT&T the expert in networking," Mr. Lunghi said. "They had the knowledge and experience that can lead to more efficiency and quickness for us."

Voice of the Customer

"The network is such a vital part of our business because we cannot do anything without it. It's a critical part of our daily activities."

— Fabrizio Lunghi, Epta Group Organization and Quality Director