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JD Williams Achieves Security, Reliability & Visibility
JD Williams is one of the largest and most successful direct home shopping companies in the UK. The company has a range of over 25 propositions with its core selling points of size and fit aimed mainly at women over 35 years of age. Ladies wear accounts for 54% of sales predominantly in the sizes 14 plus, with menswear at 8% and home and leisure at 28%. Of the total sales, Internet sales now account for 38%.
James David Williams founded the company in 1875. He was the first in the UK to use the parcel post service to send his company's products direct to his customers—a move that provided substantial savings in freight costs. It was this type of entrepreneurial thinking that led to the early success of JD Williams. The Williams family continued to build the company and maintained control until 1963. In 1970, JD Williams was acquired by the N Brown Group, and is now the largest public direct-mail order group in the UK, with annual sales of over 600 million Euros.
JD Williams has three million customers, 3,000 employees, and annual Internet sales of 260 million Euros. The company has expanded into Germany and plans to extend into other markets in the coming years.
Fast Growth, New Challenges
The astounding growth of the Internet brought much success to JD Williams. Along with success came new challenges around file transfer, security, and logistics. Internal and external transfers of all mission-critical data were slow, with little or no control, and a high problem rate of duplications and failures. In addition, support team members spent countless hours troubleshooting file transfers.
When an order is placed, JD Williams' fulfillment and logistics department transfers order data to the warehouse, where the items are picked. Then the order information is sent to the parcel system, the items are packed, and the order is delivered via a third-party carrier to the customer. All data transfers in this process were being made manually with a file transfer protocol (FTP) system prior to the implementation of the Axway solution. There was no visibility of transfers, so errors and failures were undetected until someone in the process noticed—and this someone was often the customer who hadn't received their goods. To JD Williams, this was unacceptable.
Additionally, with this insufficient degree of control, important information such as orders and invoices were not reaching fulfillment companies. This affected on-time payments and cash flow. Lack of security of file transfers was also an issue. With one million active customers at any given time, it was imperative JD Williams find a reliable solution—to increase security of file transfers, to protect every single customer's personal information, and to protect the company. JD Williams needed a world-class managed file transfer (MFT) solution to transfer business-critical data company-wide.
The Axway Solution
Axway MFT provides JD Williams file transfer monitoring and management of business-critical information. The solution is utilized company-wide at all locations in England, including headquarters, the call center and logistics center, plus remote sites in other parts of the UK. All locations are linked to the IBM mainframe and all files go through the Axway gateway. JD Williams now has centralized management and automation of all data exchanges, and real-time, end-to-end monitoring over their heterogeneous network. As the company expands to other markets, the Axway solution will grow with it.
JD Williams utilizes the Axway MFT solution for managing its data transfer for applications such as forecasting, parcel delivery, statements, internet links to suppliers and partners, customer letters, accounting systems and credit-check companies. The company was able to improve security and add encryption to ensure payment card industry (PCI) compliance and the safety of their customers' personal information.
"Prior to the Axway solution, we were reactive to errors, as opposed to proactive. Now our mission-critical transfers are visible, and we can fix issues before they become problems. Our customer and vendor relations are better as a result."
- Phill Pollitt, Operations and Technical Services Manager, JD Williams
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Axway MFT also includes audit trails, which is crucial to the auditing process for JD Williams.
Benefits — Security, Reliability, Visibility
Since implementing the Axway solution, JD Williams has improved transfer security, speed, reliability, and control. Because the solution allows data transfers to and from a variety of platforms, and setup is a relatively simple process, suppliers find the company easy to do business with. Additionally, customers and vendors receive files, invoices, orders, etc. on time. "Prior to the Axway solution, we were reactive to errors, as opposed to proactive," said Phill Pollitt, Operations and Technical Services Manager, JD Williams. "Now our mission-critical transfers are visible, and we can fix issues before they become problems. Our customer and vendor relations are better as a result."
The automation capabilities of Axway MFT have improved the reliability of transfers and eliminated the need for two support positions, allowing re-allocation of those resources to other projects. Over 3,000 files are transferred every day with no manual intervention. When transfers do have errors, the real-time view and alerting provided by the solution gives JD Williams the power to make changes and re-send the files, fast.
When choosing an MFT product, JD Williams called on several software companies with proven solutions. Axway had the right features, a solid reputation, and provided a free proof of concept, which set them apart. "Axway went above and beyond to make sure the solution worked. They have the people, the technology, and they are interested in what we do. It is a partnership for sure," said Pollitt. "The file transfer solution is second to none. It's easy to use, and it delivers."
You can learn more about JD Williams here. To learn more about Axway's comprehensive MFT solutions, visit www.axway.com/products-solutions/mft.
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