Power conditioning boosts reliability and cuts support costs
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Posted to News on 9th May 2011, 14:45

Power conditioning boosts reliability and cuts support costs

James Hall & Co, a UK wholesalers, has experienced the money-saving benefits of using power conditioning systems to protect sensitive electronic equipment in its own and independent customers' retail outlets. Indeed, the company has reduced engineer callouts for repairing critical equipment by as much as 80 per cent.

Power conditioning boosts reliability and cuts support costs

James Hall & Company is one of six UK Spar wholesalers. It serves an area southward from the Scottish border to North Wales and eastward to Hull and Scunthorpe. It supports around 500 stores in this area, two-thirds of which are independents and one-third wholly owned. These outlets include corner shops and convenience stores, petrol forecourts and stores on Army bases. The company is responsible for supplying and supporting these Spar branded outlets with everything they need to function efficiently, from store design, display systems and products through to accounts and business systems. It offers a 'one-stop shop' that protects business efficiency, maintains Spar standards and saves retailers time and effort.

Like the other five UK-based Spar wholesalers, James Hall & Co Ltd is a family business. It maintains very high standards in procurement and the operation of its business systems. A firm belief in 'added-value' is reflected in a policy of buying on performance rather than on price.

Petrol forecourt challenge

Mike Crompton, the Technical Support Manager for Retail IT is responsible for the support, maintenance and upgrade of the IT systems across the retail establishments, which support 5000 staff generating a turnover at the wholesale level of around 320million per year. Crompton has been heavily involved in the company's expansion into petrol forecourt retailing, which began 10 years ago. There are currently 127 Spar forecourts.

Because James Hall & Company's previous forecourt experience involved third-party standalone systems with a software link to the wholesaler, it was necessary to find a solution to the problem of how to integrate suitable petrol forecourt software into Spar's existing, bespoke Sparpos systems. To do this, Spar nationally, in association with BCP (Spar's Retail Software provider), forged a partnership with HTec, a leading retail and loyalty systems provider for petrol forecourts.

With its long experience of this sector, HTec had established a business strategy and policy, which has proved its worth in this highly demanding sector. Like James Hall & Co, HTec is focused on performance and quality rather than buying on price. It provided the forecourt software systems while James Hall & Company managed the back-office systems and all of the relevant hardware.

Over the years Htec has learned the importance of protecting the quality of the power supply. Its policy is to install uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units with built-in power conditioning. The UPS function is intended to protect vital IT systems, both front and back office, in the event of power failures, while the power conditioning element protects the equipment from irregularities in the power supply.

Scepticism scuppered

Initially, Crompton was cautious about the function of these units. Some years before, James Hall & Company had actually removed UPSs from its retail premises because they had caused almost as many problems as the other equipment on the sites, requiring regular attention. However, with HTec's insistence that the forecourt sites must be protected by power conditioning systems, and that these units should be supplied by Powervar, Crompton took a new look at the performance and benefits it delivered.

It was not long before he noticed that hard disk corruption/failures on Epos and back office systems were down by as much as 80 per cent compared with the non-UPS protected community. He was very surprised by this result and began to re-examine the potential role for power protection systems across the company's wider community.

He found, for example, that in one Spar shop at the University of Lancaster, an establishment with seven tills and a back office computer, there was an average of one service call a week over a prolonged period, all involving data corruption to the hard disk. Taking on board lessons from the forecourts, he installed power conditioning units, this time without the UPS components - one for each till plus the back office unit - and the frequency of callouts dropped immediately.

Rapid pay-back

It was clear that the savings both in cost and convenience to the outlet and customers represented a very substantial return on investment. In fact the entire investment in the installation of power conditioning units was paid for in a matter of months.

Not only did the level of service callouts drop dramatically, when they did happen they were much easier to fix because hard disk failures and data corruption were virtually abolished.

In order to establish the financial arguments in detail, Crompton initiated power quality monitoring across 20 stores over a two-week period. The results showed that in every instance there was at least one spike in the supply that was capable of taking out a hard drive; on top of that there were smaller events that were resulting in cumulative damage. The potential for at least one failure per fortnight was an unacceptably high level.

Roll-out plan

Across James Hall & Co's region the power supply is highly variable - a fact that is true nationwide. The quality of power produced by the UK generators was set to meet a standard that was probably more than adequate before sensitive technology was in widespread use but today there are sufficient spikes and surges to cause costly damage. Sometimes the origin of a problem - disk failure or data corruption - is not obviously traceable, since power problems do not leave an easy trail to follow. However, the data from the monitoring exercise and the practical results on the forecourts were enough to persuade Crompton that power conditioning equipment should be installed across the entire Spar community served by his company.

Over a twelve-month period, power conditioning has been rolled out to all the outlets whose equipment was due for renewal. The effect has been quickly seen. Callouts have halved and those problems that remain with the IT systems are easier to identify and quicker to repair.

For Crompton, the experience of using Powervar equipment has been completely different from previous UPS systems. Specifically, it is both reliable and easy to install and operate. He is now looking into the possibility of further increasing the return on investment by extending the life of hardware by as much as 20 per cent and benefiting from reduced service costs when the hardware service contract comes up for negotiation.

Crompton anticipates that an investment of around 130,000 in Powervar equipment could produce an additional hardware rental income from stores of over 2million.

In addition to protecting the quality of power feeding sensitive equipment, the power conditioners also have a beneficial effect on the general power supply to the stores. For example, some in-store equipment, such as cardboard crushers, draw so much power when used that they cause a large dip in the power supply, even causing the store lights to flicker. Powervar equipment helps to even this out and avoid critical system failures.

Powervar has recently published a White Paper, The business case analysis for power conditioning: An ROI study of unburdening service costs from the bottom line, which includes the James Hall & Company case study. Follow the links to view a demonstration of power quality and potential solutions, and to see Powervar's ABCs of Power Conditioning, which helps to explain power protection.


Powervar UK

Unit 5, Birch
Kembrey Park
SN2 8UU
UNITED KINGDOM

+44 (0)1793 553980

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