Large U.S. Based Appliance Manufacturer Relies on NETSCOUT to Ensure Reliability of Customer Ordering Process
Highlights
- Outages involving customized order management application interfered with order processing, resulting in lost revenue and harm to customer experience
- Service disruptions triggered large financial penalties that had to be paid to retailers
- Lack of remote site monitoring caused significant delays in issue detection and the ability to triage across many remote locations
- nGeniusONE® and InfiniStream® appliances quickly identify, isolate and mitigate critical service issues before they impact the business
- nGenius® packet flow switches feed network traffic to InfiniStream appliances and other analysis tools
- Ensures availability of the central ordering application utilized by thousands of stores
- Directly monitors three large manufacturing facilities and remotely monitors 32 distributed sites
- Proactively monitor applications and the network, enabling IT to rapidly triage problems, thus assuring the availability and performance of numerous custom developed applications with a single solution
- Avoid costly outages to the order entry application used across distributed clients, while improving the customer experience
- Maintain efficiency, quality, and cost containment on production lines with service assurance for critical manufacturing services
Customer Profile
This leader in household appliances, offered under several brand names, manufactures and distributes washing machines, refrigerators, water heaters, and air conditioners. It is leading the industry in innovation and embracing the Internet of Things by revolutionizing digital connectivity and operations in many of its home products. This $6 billion manufacturing company employs more than 10,000 people across its southern US-based headquarters, multiple manufacturing sites and operating locations around the world.
Business Challenge
With multiple factories in the U.S. and R&D facilities worldwide, as well as point-of-sale (POS) ordering capabilities throughout stores in numerous large retail chains, connectivity is the lifeblood of this manufacturer’s business. For the company’s IT team, this meant service availability and performance was absolutely critical.
The customized order management application provided to retail stores allowed customers to order the manufacturer’s appliances, as well as to arrange delivery. Any outages would interfere with order processing, which resulted in lost revenue and harm to customer satisfaction for both the manufacturer and the retailer. These service disruptions also triggered large financial penalties that had to be paid to the retailers. A single outage could easily trigger hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties.
Lacking remote site monitoring of its custom applications, IT faced significant delays in issue detection and its ability to triage across many remote locations. The IT team had to rely on users to report issues, putting them under tremendous pressure to assure availability and performance.
NETSCOUT Solution
To address the manufacturer’s critical application and network performance monitoring needs, they turned to NETSCOUT® nGeniusONE and InfiniStream appliances were deployed to quickly identify, isolate and mitigate critical service issues before they impact the business. nGenius packet flow switches were used to feed network traffic to InfiniStream appliances and other analysis tools, giving IT the ability to continuously monitor the applications to ensure availability and performance.
NETSCOUT Solution in Action
The NETSCOUT solution enabled the IT team to directly monitor three large manufacturing facilities and remotely monitor 32 distributed sites. This allowed IT to ensure the availability of the company’s central ordering application, which is utilized by thousands of stores and countless customers.
The NETSCOUT solution enabled the manufacturer’s IT team to monitor the order management application, ensuring it met retailer’s expectations on a day-to-day basis as well as during load tests performed on the system by individual retailers at regular intervals.
In addition to the order management application, the NETSCOUT solution provided service assurance for their other applications including:
- 1,200 custom Java-based applications used in critical business and manufacturing services
- On-demand application for manufacturing floor automation allowing efficient just-in-time manufacturing
- Scanner and other manufacturing equipment/application monitoring, including: ERP, Citrix, Oracle, Cisco ACI, and Office 365
Business Value
nGeniusONE, InfiniStream appliances and nGenius packet flow switches proved to be the perfect solution for this large U.S. manufacturer. The IT team was able to proactively monitor applications and the network, enabling them to rapidly triage problems, and thus assure the availability and performance of their numerous custom developed applications along with off-the-shelf applications with a single solution. This also allowed them to avoid costly outages to the order entry application used across distributed clients, while improving the customer experience.
In choosing the NETSCOUT solution, IT is also now able to maintain efficiency, quality, and cost-containment on the company’s production lines with service assurance for critical manufacturing services.
