How we helped Perrys automotive dealer group take a digital-first approach.
Perrys, one of the largest independently owned automotive dealer groups in the UK, has 51 dealerships and 30 locations nationwide.
Perrys knows that to maintain the highest satisfaction amongst customers and manufacturers, they must not only keep up but stay ahead of the technology curve.
Today, Perrys rely heavily on IT systems that are a critical part of everyday operations across contact centres, workshops and showrooms. System outages directly impact on productivity and customer satisfaction, ultimately resulting in lost revenue.
When Perrys first reached out to Forge Technologies, the automotive dealer was looking for a reliable partner to upgrade its email environment. The original system was getting old and needed to adapt to modern standards. Perrys tasked the team to review the existing landscape and provide recommendations on modernising it to meet the evolving needs of its users.
Highlights
Better Security and Resiliency
10X Increase in Bandwidth
Improved User and Customer Experience
Approach
Forge Technologies began by performing a detailed audit that assessed the email and server environment. They soon discovered that Perrys could benefit from a thorough digital overhaul. The landscape was a mix of environments and systems across various infrastructure and managed by different vendors. This was not only inefficient and costly to run, but also challenging to manage and maintain. Extending the scope of the audit, the focus shifted to the wider IT estate. This exercise helped develop a roadmap and a list of recommendations, some more critical than others but all centred around the same drivers: design security-driven and scalable technology with future in mind; empower employees with cutting-edge tools while maximising productivity and minimising downtime; enhance customer experience through seamless experience across channels. Forge Technologies established a three-stage roadmap, all interlinked to form a cohesive, modern digital foundation:
- Servers and applications
- Telephony and contact centre
- Network services
Servers and Applications
The first step was to mitigate security risks derived from ageing server hardware and email software. Perrys owned the hardware which was running as an infrastructure-as-a-service in a co-location facility, and was responsible for managing the servers and supporting applications in-house.
Because the server hardware and some of the operating systems were now getting old, they were out of vendor support. And without a formal support mechanism in place, Perrys’ IT team had no escalation route if a major incident or cyber breach occurred. Outdated applications exposed Perrys to further security vulnerabilities.
To future-proof the server environment, Forge Technologies accelerated the migration to cloud and Microsoft Azure with a two-phased approach. Initially, Microsoft Exchange solution was replaced by Microsoft 365.
As part of the upgrade, the team deployed Microsoft Exchange Online, a hosted messaging solution for managing email, calendar, contacts and tasks. A health check helped prioritise immediate security threats within the email environment. Creating a more secure configuration and setup, the team installed additional layers of security to protect mailboxes and data.
During phase two, Forge Technologies worked through decommissioning the legacy hardware and moving from the co-location environment into a flexible, cloud-based Microsoft Azure platform. For serverless enterprise-grade cloud file share, the team migrated data onto Azure Files with no disruption to business. In addition, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) was deployed to enable remote access management and identity protection.
Forge Technologies used Microsoft Azure Firewall and VPN gateways as an interim solution to protect network, users and data from security threats. It was later replaced with a Fortinet FortiGate Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) that was better fit for purpose.
Telephony and Contact Centre
Next, Forge Technologies shifted focus on the telephony and contact centre environment. Providing a good customer experience on the phone is mission critical for the business with voice being the primary communication method for Perrys’ customers. Perrys’ contact centre agents handle hundreds of calls every day from sales inquiries to servicing and parts. Its old telephony platform was ageing and in need of major software and hardware upgrades to remain current and supported.
The old on-premise hardware was transitioned to virtualised cloud platforms that included Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX), Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) and Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles (CUAC). Together they create a secure and resilient omnichannel contact centre environment for better collaboration and customer experience, and easier management that is centralised across locations.
For advanced insights and call tracking, Forge Technologies introduced a Red Box call recording platform that allows Perrys to capture every conversation within the organisation as an integrated part of the Cisco UCCX solution. In addition, through an Imagicle call logging tool, managers and supervisors can analyse and monitor calls, allocate budgets and schedule reports.
In total, the telephony and contact centre migration covered 1,300 users in 35 locations and six contact centres, across different departments. Despite its complexity, the transformation was seamless and completed within hours, without any disruption to the business. Forge Technologies took over the management of the entire hosting environment and the servers that the system runs on, freeing up Perrys’ IT team for more strategic tasks. The licensing model was changed to Cisco Flex which means that Perrys will always have the most up-to-date version of the software.
Network Services
During the network transformation phase, the focus was on addressing changes in business adoption of technology, increasing security for future protection as well as embracing the shift to modern vehicle sales approaches and demands on service centres.
High-performance, high-bandwidth network is critical to Perrys’ business operations as vehicle manufacturers set new expectations around VR-based sales and team productivity and collaboration tools depend upon the cloud. Adding further pressure on the network, are large software downloads such as firmware updates, navigation systems and applications that run in modern vehicles.
To keep up with the uplift in demand and improve network performance without increasing the cost of the bandwidth, Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) was selected as a new connectivity solution, including Fortinet SD-Branch technology and new multi-carrier Direct Internet Access (DIA) circuits. Equipped with FortiGate Firewalls and a Unified Threat Protection (UTP) bundle, the solution provides comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Forge Technologies completed the migration seamlessly by creating resilient site-to-site VPN connectivity between the old WAN and the new FortiGate firewalls hosted in Microsoft Azure. As well as reducing risk and cost, the approach enabled Perrys to take advantage of the new network as soon as circuits were installed and handed over. The majority of sites were moved to dual 1Gbps fibre circuits with either 1Gbps or 100Mbps of bandwidth, resulting in a ten times bandwidth increase.
Supporting Perrys at every step of the migration, Forge Technologies supplied and coordinated the installation of over 70 WAN circuits, managing surveys, wayleaves applications, installations and commissioning. They designed the configuration of the Fortinet infrastructure from zero touch provisioning templates to optimising complex routing protocols; from web filtering policies to SSL deep packet inspection and branded guest portals.
