Dolphin helps set up new head office for major retailer
Victorian Plumbing
The Client
Victorian Plumbing is a major online bathroom retailer based in Southport, UK. Founded in 1999, the business originally specialised in refurbishing old Victorian baths and traditional bathroom products for exclusive bathroom showrooms in London, UK. A decision was made to move into Internet retailing, allowing the business to expand. Now Victorian Plumbing have established themselves as the largest retailers of branded and in house designed bathrooms and accessories in the UK.
The Challenge
Due to the company’s rapid growth, Victorian Plumbing required a larger head office to accommodate increased numbers of staff. The need for expansion was vital as delivery time and response times were escalating. The extra capacity was needed for the ever-growing sales and satisfying customers with more stock and more employees for areas such as customer service.
The new head office consisted of a warehouse section for small parcels and attached offices, this needed a complete overhaul in terms of IT infrastructure. This was a big operation that required a lot of planning as a large number of new IT hardware would be required as well as the planning of the network infrastructure and adding to the existing high quality CCTV system.
The Solution
Due to our long term relationship with the customer, when Victorian Plumbing informed Dolphin of the required move, we already had a very good understanding of how they worked and what they would need. Over the years Dolphin has used its technology knowhow to help Victorian Plumbing at each stage of their growth as a business. Equipped with all the relevant knowledge required to effectively plan out the move, design and consulting took place over a few meetings before an agreed timeline for implementation was agreed. We were flexible with our customer, helping them adapt to the new surroundings with 24/7 unlimited IT support on demand, assisting them to ease into the transition of a new head office.
The new network infrastructure consisted of 800 fresh cables of CAT6, advanced CCTV system with analytics, internet connectivity, cabinets linked with redundant fibre, SAN systems and active hardware such as new switch gears. All relevant IT hardware was supplied such as multiple servers running as hyper visors, back up and storage solutions.
Additionally required was a large number of new IT hardware such as PCs and phones and the implementation of conference facilities.
The Result
The results of the design, planning and implementation of the move were very beneficial. Staff at Victorian Plumbing were able to continue their work with less stress. We made the move as seamless as possible with little downtime by having a quality back up system, a highly skilled IT team and plenty of communication with the customer.
It also meant there was room for a multitude of new staff, enabling them to help manage the work load for the high in demand brand. Our work doesn’t end here though, Dolphin will continue to monitor and provide 24/7 support, whether that be online or offline, to the head office, and to Victorian Plumbing as a whole.
The team at Dolphin have been able to fully support us in the ever-broadening use of IT within our business.
“We needed a forward-thinking, flexible IT Provider at Victorian Plumbing to assist us to develop and maintain the use of IT which is crucial to the ongoing success of our rapidly growing business. The team at Dolphin have been able to fully support us in the ever-broadening use of IT within our business. A good example of this is how they advised us and provided a complete telephone call centre system to service our rapidly growing customer service and telephone sales operations.”
