Dreams bed retailer deploys VoIP

Bed retailer, Dreams, is deploying VoIP and 3G mobile technology, to link its rapidly growing chain of stores. The company is undergoing a major expansion programme that will see it open one new store each week, for 50 weeks.

Dreams plans to link up each shop within seven days, helping with a strategy to capture 25% of the market and double sales to £500m.

Rather than wait for BT to provide fixed ADSL lines to the new stores, the company is using high-speed digital mobile to provide temporary connections, allowing it to transfer information such as electronic point of sales data between the stores, head office and distribution centres.

When BT has installed the fixed lines, the company uses SIP trunking to network all the stores to a central customer care hub and to one another, providing faster VoIP communications and savings of £750,000 a year in line costs.

The system allows Dreams to make 9,500 deliveries a day, with optimal use of its delivery fleet.

Communications systems integrator, Corporate Communications (Europe), provides technical responsibility for communications.

Corporate Communications designed and implemented Dreams’ IP virtual private network, which is based on an Multiprotocol Label Switching network, and uses ADSL access for the stores and distribution centres.