Andy Warhol once made the point that fame is short-lived and in the same way the window of opportunity in the retail sector will not last forever. So why have so many resellers struggled to tap into this lucrative market? Griffin and their Partner TNS reveal just how they have succeeded in selling broadband to the retail sector.
This year's channel choice for ISP of the year, Griffin Internet is the UK's leading supplier of managed broadband. Known for their ISP in a box solution, Griffin has seen considerable growth from Partners addressing the retail and homeworker sectors. Although different types of customers, their requirements are quite similar and fit very well with Griffin's core competencies. Griffin has developed systems to enable resellers to manage large volumes of high-quality, business-grade, broadband lines at low cost. Over the two years they have been with Griffin, TNS have become their most successful Partner in the retail sector.
Andrew Dickinson, Sales Director at Griffin explains: "We have worked hard to make the partnership with TNS a success. It has not always been plain sailing and we have had to adapt to meet each others needs and those of the end customer. With a number of big wins under their belt and a strong pipeline we feel TNS is well positioned to be very successful in this market."
TNS is an international data communications company that facilitates payments, money and voices to move around the world. TNS has over 18 years experience specialising in providing managed network services to the banking, financial services and retail sectors and is trusted by customers throughout the world to transport billions of card payment transactions each year. In recent years TNS has offered that same level of service resilience and high performance to retailers with TNS Managed Broadband - a service that currently supports thousands of tier 1 & 2 retail endpoints in the UK and Ireland, all connected to TNS' private fully managed, PCI DSS certified backbone network.
By connecting to the TNS network retailers are able to transport everything from internal documents, emails and online customer orders to data polling and payment transactions, as well as access the Internet, if required. Payment transactions that may take 5-6 seconds to process via an ISDN connection, can take under one second when using the TNS managed broadband service.
Christine Howorth who heads up TNS' connectivity sales into the retail sector summarises the partnership like this "TNS has a fantastic reputation in the retail sector through our leading position in the transaction market. We had to choose a broadband partner that had a similar standing and track record and after careful deliberation we selected Griffin. Between us we have developed a compelling proposition that differentiates TNS against the strong competition in this market."
What are the retailers looking for? Some are looking to replace their existing ISDN or analogue lines and many early broadband adopters are looking for an improved and fully managed service. Retailers are dedicated to reducing payment transaction times to move people more quickly through the tills, improve the customer shopping experience and generate brand loyalty. They need trustworthy suppliers offering high uptime guarantees, fast business-grade connectivity and secure transactions, at a low cost. They also need a direct and intuitive way to manage an estate of what can be thousands of lines. A 20% change in store numbers over a year is not uncommon and managing this via telephone or email just takes too long. Similarly uptime is critical and some retailers need direct access to test lines before raising faults.
So what is stopping other resellers from being as successful as TNS? A lot of it is to do with trust. TNS will often already handle transactions for the customer to whom they are pitching broadband and they understand the importance of security and reliability. The TNS network is directly connected to the Griffin network over high capacity resilient interconnects and so none of the traffic touches the public Internet. By missing out the Internet, using business-grade broadband and directly connecting to Griffin, TNS can achieve sub-second transaction times, the most important criteria for most card issuers and retailers. In contrast, most resellers are pitching an Internet-facing broadband solution and are sketchy about how they will manage existing transaction traffic. The retail sector needs a very high uptime guarantee and some broadband SLAs are often just not good enough. TNS have developed solutions that offer near 100% uptimes. They have their own GPRS/3G fail-over routers and Griffin can supply broadband from multiple network operators so that if one broadband line fails the other one takes the load. Finally there is the in-life management of the broadband estate. Retailers need visibility and control so that when things change or go wrong they can act quickly to get a store online. They need to know that they can do as much as they want to through an online portal and that there is a knowledgeable support team that they can hand-off to day or night. Resellers often have few automated tools even for their own use and therefore the customer has to rely on them even more for provisioning and in-life support. This adds to the cost of the solution especially if they are required to provide 24x7 cover.
At first sight broadband can seem like a more expensive option to dial-up however sold properly DSL will reduce costs for the retailer enabling them to run multiple back office applications, such as stock control, email, Internet, VoIP and CCTV over a single connection. TNS ensure incredibly fast card payment transaction times at the point of sale by routing them directly to the bank. By making the broadband link mission critical, backups on LLU and GPRS/3G are essential. TNS offer wireless and fixed line backup technologies at store, warehouse and head office locations. Services are proactively managed 24x7x365 by two Network Operations Centres. Specialist support is on hand for both the network and the broadband. Retailers can access web-based monitoring tools to view the status and performance of each store's connections and view payment transaction activity both historically and in real time. Griffin's management and diagnostics tools make managing a large broadband portfolio easy. Pricing is competitive as often transaction and file settlement are bundled into the ADSL pricing.
Kris De Moor, Int. IT Director at Brantano, comments, "We selected TNS due to their professionalism, technical knowledge and flexibility. The TNS team did a fantastic job in an extremely tight timescale and our store managers have commented positively on the solution. Card transactions now take on average 1.2 seconds to authorise, which is great for both customer and staff satisfaction, and TNS' 24/7 network monitoring service gives us total peace of mind."
Scott Kerr, Head of IT at the Scotmid Co-op group, explains: "TNS has an outstanding reputation for its services, especially in the payments sector, and we wanted to work with a partner who could provide the best security for our transactions. The company offers network resilience and 24/7 support, providing peace of mind.
The increased bandwidth available allows us to fully leverage existing and planned applications to improve corporate performance and customer service. It also allows us to significantly improve our disaster recovery capability".
Griffin is strictly channel-only but all their Partner Managers have experience working on big ticket deals and they get very involved with training sales people and helping to identify and close opportunities with resellers. Furthermore the white label ethos extends to Griffin's pre-sales engineers who are happy to act as your 'Virtual Expert' and join your bid team in front of the customer.
Where another Griffin Partner is well placed in a retail bid and needs a solution for transactions there is an opportunity to Partner with TNS and take advantage of their investment in direct interconnects to the Griffin network.
Griffin adds value in a number of ways:
- They have a demonstrable track record in the retail sector
- They create systems to ensure provisioning and in-life management is simple
- They offer great value services that give you regular, recurring revenue
- They have multiple IP suppliers providing inherent resilience
- They offer secure, business grade broadband connections
- They Partner with transaction specialists and all the major carriers
- They will work with you on multi-site retail deals to help you win the business
- All services are white label only so all of the benefit accrues to the reseller