Telecom Lead America: Marston’s PLC, a brewers and pub operators in the U.K. has selected Ruckus Wireless to supply Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi equipment for use within its pubs and restaurants nationwide.
With over 2,000 locations across the UK, Marston’s wanted to leverage Wi-Fi to improve the customer experience and increase the efficiency of its operations.
In a recent survey by eConsultancy, 43 percent of respondents in the UK said they had used their mobile devices to compare prices and look at product reviews while out shopping, up from 19 percent in 2011.
According to an OnDevice Research survey, 74 percent of respondents in the UK would be happy for a retailer to send a text or email with promotions while they’re using in-store Wi-Fi.
To improve service efficiency and guest access, Marston’s is installing Ruckus ZoneFlex dual-band 802.11n Smart Wi-Fi access points (APs) both indoors and outdoors.
These Smart Wi-Fi products support line of business applications such as in-store electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) systems that staff access using tablet devices to provide a more flexible way to take orders, settle bills and provide a greater level of service.
Previously Marston’s had installed in its pubs a single Wi-Fi access point based on conventional Wi-Fi technology. But recently, the demand for Wi-Fi access has increased as more users armed with more devices try to simultaneously access the network. This raised concerns over capacity, coverage and performance.
Rob Derbyshire, operations manager for Marston’s, said: “Meraki’s system had a compelling user interface but the recurring annual license costs per AP made the overall solution much more expensive. This fact, along with lower client capacities and a number of feature and architectural limitations, such as inter-AP roaming performance that go along with a cloud-based solution, just didn’t work well in our environments.”
The Ruckus kit gave Marston’s the flexibility to deploy standalone APs or multiple APs with local controllers – all of which could be centrally managed.
Marston’s is deploying single or multiple Ruckus ZoneFlex 7363 APs inside its pubs and restaurants along with outdoor Ruckus ZoneFlex 7762 APs in garden areas. Wi-Fi management is performed remotely by accessing local ZoneDirector Controllers or standalone APs, and the Ruckus FlexMaster Centralized Wi-Fi Management System enables all these environments to be managed from a single location.
