Teljoy, a South African leader in consumer appliance rental,\nservice and repairs through an innovative rent-to-own model, has partnered with\nSaicom, a market leader in the telecoms industry, to overhaul its network\ninfrastructure and telephony environment as it evolves into a digitally-led\norganisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1990s, given its massively distributed branch\nenvironment across the country, Teljoy had a significant multiprotocol label\nswitching (MPLS) network. However, the infrastructure was expensive and\ndifficult to maintain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we transitioned into becoming a digital business, the\ntraditional MPLS network was no longer supporting our strategy. We wanted to\nbecome a hybrid, cloud-based e-commerce business and needed reliable and stable\nconnectivity at an affordable rate. Furthermore, our network had to accommodate\nour growth requirements. For example, if we needed to open a satellite branch\nfor three months it had to deliver the flexibility and speed of execution\nrequired to do so,\u201d said Rowan Ziman, Head of IT at Teljoy Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A change of network approach<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To this end, Teljoy identified software-defined networking\nin a Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) as the preferred technology to enable this. It\nticked all the boxes for the organisation as it was cloud-based, flexible and\nprovided more cost-effective network connections for each business within the\nTeljoy Group stable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following a Proof of Concept (PoC) round, Teljoy selected\nSaicom as its preferred partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot only was Saicom a VeloCloud partner, but it delivered\nthe relationship-driven approach we wanted. For us, it is about working with a\npartner who understands our business and is willing to help us get the most out\nof the technology. From a platform perspective, our engineering team was\ncomfortable with the VeloCloud offering and it is very user-friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Teljoy Group went live with VeloCloud in the third\nquarter of 2018 and has not looked back since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Saicom SD-WAN solution resulted in a drastic\nimprovement in Internet connectivity across the group and gave it better\ncontrol of its network when it came to routing traffic and prioritisation. As\nthis is a fully managed solution, Saicom takes care of Teljoy\u2019s uptime so the\ngroup can focus on delivering on its strategic mandate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFurthermore, it delivers better redundancy and a broad\nspectrum of choices when it comes to connectivity at our branch offices. This\nincludes everything from radio and cell access to LTE and fibre depending on\nwhat is the most appropriate choice for the environment. Saicom and VeloCloud\nhave opened up significantly more options for us,\u201d said Ziman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cloud-based telephony<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond its network environment, Teljoy was also\nexperiencing customer service issues with their existing telephony solution.\nPeople were getting \u2018lost\u2019 in the system and the business had to rely on a\nthird-party to get the detailed call centre reports it needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe also tested several Disaster Recovery and Business\nContinuity scenarios and the conclusion was that we could not run our business\neffectively if our call centre was not on-site. This needed to change. As with\nour approach to the network, we decided that a cloud-based solution would give\nus the flexibility and reliability necessary. The solution had to be based on\nindustry best practice as we did not want to reinvent the wheel when it came to\nimplementation\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teljoy subsequently contracted Saicom to take over its\ntelephony environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere were many good solutions available but the fact that\nSaicom could guarantee the interoperability of the telephony solution with the\nSD-WAN environment made it an easy choice to make. This would ensure our voice\ntraffic would be prioritised properly and everything would be housed under one\ngroup with the relationships already firmly in place,\u201d adds Ziman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The head office went live with the cloud-based telephony\nenvironment in December 2018 with branches rolling it out on a\nreturn-on-investment basis. With this offering, Teljoy has improved visibility\nacross the rest of the group and now has the element of control it did not\npreviously have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven though the telephony environment was significantly\nmore difficult to implement than the SD-WAN, Saicom was willing to do whatever\nwas necessary to ensure our systems were working optimally. The company adapts\nto our needs and manages our network and telephony outcomes on our behalf,\u201d\nsaid Ziman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSaicom delivers us with the partnership value-adds we need\nto fully transform our business into a digital environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teljoy, a South African leader in consumer appliance rental, service and repairs through an innovative rent-to-own model, has partnered with Saicom, a market leader in the telecoms industry, to overhaul its network infrastructure and telephony environment as it evolves into a digitally-led organisation. In the 1990s, given its massively distributed branch environment across the country, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":32771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,36,38,602,9059,13],"tags":[2754,5666,162,93,12844,2755,1611,1919,12843,12845],"class_list":["post-32770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","category-intelligent-technology","category-networking","category-retail","category-south-africa","category-top-stories","tag-mpls","tag-multiprotocol-label-switching","tag-network","tag-network-infrastructure","tag-rowan-ziman","tag-saicom","tag-south-african","tag-telecoms","tag-telephony","tag-teljoy"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32770"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32774,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32770\/revisions\/32774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}