Bailiwick senior account executive Tim Tuffs likens the recent control room modernization project for a national retail chain to brain surgery. “This project was extremely critical for these stores and store programs. It involved going into their facilities and replacing all of the servers, routers, and switches in their control rooms,” he says. The control room houses everything needed to keep a store up and running, from computers and cameras to points of sale and mood music.

Before Bailiwick took on the control room modernization project, this superstore’s control rooms were cluttered with store products and legacy devices gathering dust. Cords could easily become unplugged. Outdated equipment led to technology failures or even store outages. “They could fix it pretty quickly, but that’s time and money and effort people are spending to fix it,” says Tuffs. “It’s also downtime. It makes them look like their store isn’t operating efficiently. So this project was ultimately about keeping that reliability and improving processes internally for them.”

Control Room Modernization

With the control room modernization, the superstore has sped up its processes—including checkout times. This means they save and make more money. Additionally, they can upgrade other areas of their stores thanks to a more capable system.

As part of the project—which started rolling out to the retail chain’s locations in 2022 after a successful proof of concept in 2019 and pilot in 2021—Bailiwick consolidated the five-rack equipment systems at select stores into two cabinets. This resulted in cleaner, more secure, easier-to-service spaces with a smaller footprint. Each pair of cabinets features everything a store needs to run: switches, routers, servers, patch panels, and all cabling and power distribution for the equipment. “Basically, the pairs of cabinets we’re sending out are giant, preconfigured, plug-and-play devices,” says William Verburg-Cunningham, manager of configuration.

Ease of installation is key to this control room modernization project’s success. Once the cabinets arrive onsite, the installation team has one evening to move the new equipment in and the old equipment out. Bailiwick executed a total of 100 installs in 2022 and 2023. They expect to complete 34 more in 2024. “From when we started this project to where we are now, the build and scope have changed a lot,” says Verburg-Cunningham. “The configuration workload has essentially doubled. So that’s been a challenge but also a growth opportunity. We’ve been able to pivot and grow to meet the retailer’s needs.”

History with the Client

This retail chain has played an integral part in Bailiwick’s growth since the partnership first began nearly 30 years ago. Bailiwick started as a supplier of equipment for the superstore. “They asked if we could install and we said, ‘yes,’” recalls Dan Reich, customer success manager. “This simple answer helped propel Bailiwick into the new world of service delivery provider.”

Since then, the retail company has relied on Bailiwick for project management, deployment support, asset management, engineering services, low-voltage installation services, and electrical installation services. Bailiwick also made some internal changes to better serve this client and others. These changes include adopting important data security measures and implementing Smartsheet status reporting. Even the opening of the new IT integration center in Shakopee stemmed partially from the relationship with this client and the need to support the work Bailiwick does for them.

“We have a very strong relationship with the retailer,” says Tuffs. “We work together to find ways to not only provide great service levels but lower costs. We touch a lot of people over at the company. We’re working with multiple groups.”