About the Client
What is the full name of the client brand?
Tasco Petroleum
What industry are they in, and what is their position within the industry?
Wholesale Petroleum distribution and retail outlets. They are one of the largest privately owned petroleum distributors in Australia.
What are important details about this client that should be shared?
69 sites being approx. 50 service stations and 19 depots based predominantly within Northern Victoria, Southern NSW and into South East SA. A wide range of customers and industries are serviced including agricultural, mining, commercial, transport and retail.
Their Challenge
What issue, challenge, or pain point did the client want to address?
Client reached out to us to discuss what would be required to move on from their current Telstra MWAN solution citing a lack of flexibility to keep pace with a rapidly changing and growing business.
The client runs a hybrid cloud with a reliance on both on premise and cloud applications. As the reliance on the internet grew the frequency of staff reporting speed issues also grew.
It was also proving difficult to get services in place at new sites without significant delays and the high cost of the managed MPLS services provided by the current carrier restricted the ability to purchase the high speed links the client needed to improve business efficiency.
Why did they have this problem?
Tasco Petroleum had been with the same internet carrier for more than a decade so options now available as the result of the NBN rollout were not previously available.
Also, Tasco Petroleum is a dynamic business with a strong customer focus and a desire to be a leader in the petroleum and retail industry with over 60 years’ experience. Outstanding customer service and a premium product set coupled with the acquisition of a number of businesses in recent years has resulted in a period of continuous rapid growth. In fact, Tasco Petroleum has more than doubled in size since 2006.
The number of transactions now handled each day is in the tens of thousands and all these transactions have to be conveyed to the data warehouse at head office or to cloud based systems.
As is the case with many other businesses the Covid-19 outbreak impacted the business with a number of staff having to work remotely.
All these things placed additional strain on the existing network.
What were your client’s expected outcomes from working with a vendor to solve their stated problem?
The client was aware that their requirements were complex. The number of sites and difficult to service regional locations combined with the need to operate 24/7/365 meant any changes would need to be done without impacting operations. They were seeking to recruit a team who could audit the existing connectivity, propose, and design an upgraded solution and deal with the implementation challenges in a timely manner.
As Int Tec Solutions have a deep understanding of the company’s business systems the client reached out to us to see if we could investigate the challenges they were facing with the current connectivity, make recommendations and if necessary work with third parties on their behalf to provide a resolution.
This answer is critical, as you will circle back to it in section four.
Why did they engage Int Tec Solutions to help?
Int Tec Solutions have supported Tasco Petroleum for around 15 years. Int Tec Solutions have over the years demonstrated the technical capacity and ability to resolve complex issues affecting the business including issues involving telecommunications carriers and multiple remote sites.
Based on our previous demonstrated performance the client had a level of confidence that we were the right party to take this lead and could resolve this issue for them too.
Solution
How did we approach the challenge?
Int Tec Solutions conducted an Initial audit on all related sites and services to ensure relevant details were captured and no attached services such as telephony were inadvertently overlooked or would be impacted by any changes and the data used for comparison with the clients records.
The site data was used to conduct service qualifications to find out exactly what services were available at each of the sites. Current network utilisation was measured and documented to determine capacity required between sites and to the internet to ensure correctly size links were recommended.
The information gathered was used to create a custom design and proposal for the client for a highly secure carrier agnostic solution providing the flexibility to meeting the changing needs of the client and return to them control of their corporate wide area network. To this end NBN connections with the appropriate SLA would be used where possible.
Int Tec Solutions involved senior members of our team with specialist experience to assist. Members involved included Project managers, CyberSecurity specialists and Network specialists who were called on as necessary.
How was the client involved in this stage?
From the outset a project plan was developed by the specialist team at Int Tec Solutions and presented to the client for information and approval. We made sure the client was involved in the process and updated on progress and findings from the beginning to end.
Int Tec Solutions worked collaboratively with the client to ensure all pain points such as future growth, flexibility, security and wish list items were addressed.
What was the solution?
A Fully Managed (by Int Tec Solutions) Software Designed Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) was chosen as it provided the flexibility and rapid deployment that the client was seeking. Multiple NBN links were deployed to each site employing different technologies for redundancy such as ethernet paired with 4G.
What was the timeline?
It took approximately 2 weeks from when the client contacted us until they received a proposal. Once signoff had been received by the client it took approximately 4 weeks to implement. Given the list of requirements and number of parties involved we feel this is an outstanding result.
Results
Yes the outcome met and exceeded the clients stated outcomes.
- All link speeds were upgraded, for example the bandwidth at head office was upgraded from 50Megabit to 1000Megabit.
- Redundancy was improved.
- The time required to provide communications and applications to a new site dropped from in excess of 3 months wait to an average of 2 weeks.
- Despite dramatically greater bandwith at all sites pricing input into proposal showing a monthly saving of $4200.00 Ex GST per month once all services implemented
- Carrier agnostic so not restricted by the ability of a single carrier to provide services to a particular site
What benefits did the client see because of your work immediately?
Improved employee productivity and morale, faster and more reliable system and application access. Ability to work remotely due to issues such as covid 19 significantly improved. Significant cost savings. Ability to rapidly bring new sites/locations onto the corporate network. Ability to stream video such as security video and video conferences from sites where it was not previously available.
What benefits should the client see because of your work over time?
As detailed above, client will get greater value out of their on premise and cloud infrastructure.
Improved staff morale, increased confidence in current systems and software choices. Improved business decisions and strategy due to timely production of (realtime) reporting.
Improved business confidence due to unrestricted growth out of the ability to rapidly deploy new sites and be confident that staff can work from anywhere, anytime. Further scope for process automation and therefore savings resulting from ability to scale without the need for a larger workforce.
