Based in Milton Keynes, Arena Flowers has been providing floral arrangements for more than 12 years. While its operations are high volume and 24/7, for several months that encompass Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, its order volumes increase ten-fold. During this peak time, the company must lease additional warehouses to fulfil the increased throughput. This extra space is often required at relatively short notice and the availability of a reliable internet connection varies from site to site. A high-speed reliable internet connection is crucial to the success of Arena Flower’s operation. As orders are processed, it is required to keep track of packages as they progress through the system. The business also does a lot of printing on site, with each package containing a card, packing information and a courier label, as well as offering personalisation for their products.
The warehouse space that was available for last year’s seasonal peak did not come with an internet connection and the timescale mean that fixed line services couldn’t be installed at the site in time. A site survey showed that there was good 4G signal at the site and Arena Flowers approached Comms365 to provide wireless broadband connectivity throughout the site, in time for orders to be processed.
Comms 365 supplied four Continuum boxes, which are designed to offer internet connectivity over multiple bonded 4G connections, as well as access to cloud, corporate services, email, IP telephony and VPN. Each Continuum box provided connectivity for every area of the business; one for printing, office use, the warehouse production line and another as a backup, as business continuity was the primary objective for the business. The vendor quickly deployed the solution, leaving plenty of time to spare prior to Arena Flower’s production line going live.
The timeline was as follows:
- The initial enquiry was made on 4 January 2018, but the location of the site was confirmed on 12 January – the delay was due to contractual details with the landlords.
- The site survey was completed on 18 January
- Contracts were completed on 25 January and preferred date for installation scheduled.
- On-site installation took place on 29 January when testing was completed, and the system was ready to go live.
“During our peak times over Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, our throughput can increase tenfold, so if we’re trying to process tens of thousands of parcels in a 12-hour period, we can’t afford any downtime at all,” said Sandy Reid, chief technical officer at Arena Flowers. “The Continuum boxes that Comms365 provided were an ideal solution to the predicament we were in; not only did we require a connection to be deployed rapidly in an environment with no connectivity, it was imperative that the connection remained fast and stable at all times. Throughout the peak periods we experienced no outages and the internet connection held up excellently, so we were very pleased with the entire project and would definitely look to Comms365 again in the future.”
