Screwfix

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Founded in 1979, Screwfix grew rapidly to become one of the largest providers of building and DIY materials to trade and private customers in the U.K. The original Screwfix business model was based on high-volume catalog orders, but it now runs a substantial online operation and has recently opened a network of 143 trade outlets where customers can purchase or order items. Today the company holds in excess of 4 million customer records and employs more than 2,400 people at its head office, contact center, and trade outlets.

The contact center, in particular, plays a critical role. Using customer relationship management (CRM) software developed by Screwfix, call agents receive and place orders, and handle other customer inquiries including refunds and exchanges. Orders are directed to the company’s state-of-the-art warehouse in central U.K. where goods are weighed, packed, and dispatched to locations the length and breadth of the country. Simon Trowbridge, technical projects manager at Screwfix says, “A customer who places an order before 6 p.m. can expect to receive their goods before 10 a.m. the following day. Speed of delivery is essential for our customers, and the contact center team is at the heart of this operation.”

Until recently, contact center agents used the CRM system running on desktop PCs connected to the company’s datacenter. However, the overall performance of the system was slow and sometimes made it difficult to respond quickly to a customer inquiry. Peter Smith, Screwfix’s server and storage team leader, says, “It took employees up to 25 minutes to log on, load their profile, and start up their applications. That can be a real disadvantage, especially when people are changing shifts. It also had an impact on our overall standards of customer service.”

Employees were also distracted by the noise made by PC cooling fans, and in summer even the air conditioning sometimes struggled to keep the temperature down. Smith says, “Employees sit in groups of six. It’s a good way for people to feel like they are part of a team, but it also means that the heat generated by PCs can be uncomfortable at times.”

In 2008, as the PCs were coming to the end of their lifecycle, Smith and Trowbridge discussed alternatives with Sun. The company recommended a proof of concept where five Sun Ray 270 Virtual Display Client terminals were deployed in different areas of the contact center. The end-user response was impressive. “It was a fixed-term test,” says Smith. “But at the end of the proof of concept employees refused to give them back.” It wasn’t difficult to see why. Apart from design considerations — the Sun Ray Virtual Display Clients combine the display screen and computer in one compact unit — employees were able to access applications far more quickly than before, allowing them to look up information and respond more quickly to customers.

So it was no great surprise when shortly afterward, the Screwfix IT team deployed Sun Ray 270 Virtual Display Client terminals to the entire contact center team. The current setup now includes 350 of the devices driven by 10 Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules residing in two Sun Blade 6000 Chassis. Six of the blades run Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services; the other four run Sun Ray Software 4 on top of the Solaris 10 OS. Load balancing is managed by a Cisco Ace module.

Says Smith, “It was essential that the deployment minimized disruption to employees and our customers, so most installation work took place overnight during one week. It was also important that employees could just switch on the new devices and get on with their jobs. We were anxious about this, but the technology is so easy to use, that for most people it was business as usual from the moment they switched on their new machine.”

When you step into the contact center today, the difference is striking. First, it’s a lot quieter. You can actually hear conversations that were sometimes obscured by the background hum of PC cooling fans. In addition, Sun Ray 270 Virtual Display Client terminals consume significantly less power. Compared with a typical PC that uses about 160 W the Sun Ray 270 Virtual Display Client terminals require only 40 W. This saves some 45 kW hours per day, which not only generates financial savings but also makes it much easier to control the temperature of the contact center without hundreds of heat-generating PCs.

Employees also save time. It now takes less than a minute for an employee to get started at the beginning of their shift, up to 95% faster than before. What’s more, the Sun Ray Virtual Display Clients save space, so that employees have more room on and under their desks. It also means that they can work more flexibly. If a desk or a machine isn’t available, they can move to another Sun Ray Virtual Display Client without worrying about whether another device will run the exact software that they need to do their job.

In addition, the new solution is a lot more secure. Says Trowbridge, “Our Sun Ray clients don’t have CD-ROMs, or attach to USB, or other storage devices. Even if a device went missing, we wouldn’t need to worry because they only display information that resides securely at the datacenter.”

Deployment of thin-client technology has also significantly lowered hardware total cost of ownership. “Overall administration is much simpler and far less time consuming. We can now update all the machines remotely without having to walk the floor and update separate PCs. In addition, calls to the help desk from the contact center have fallen from 50 a day to fewer than five. It means that we can put one full-time member of the IT team onto more proactive work.”

Smith says, “Apart from the impressive energy and time savings, this has been a real opportunity for us to improve the working conditions for our employees in the contact center. We’ve always made it clear that we value their contribution enormously, and this deployment has given us the chance to show the extent of our appreciation.”