The Rexel Group is a leading electrical supplies wholesaler. In recent years, it’s focused on expanding its business worldwide. So that it now has 27,000 employees in 26 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. But its German subsidiary needed help to handle changing customer expectations. 

With 31 branches and four logistics centres distributing up to 300,000 components across the country, Rexel Germany has a lot of customers to keep up with. To offer the level of service it wanted, it needed a smarter network that could respond faster to increased online sales. The Rexel Group turned to us to help.

To help Rexel better manage its system, we rolled out a Connect Meraki software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN). It combines the benefits of different network technologies and puts control back into Rexel’s hands. It used the company’s existing MPLS network for mission-critical and sensitive internal data, giving it a dedicated connection. Meanwhile, the system inexpensively routes less urgent traffic over the internet.

An online management portal lets Rexel’s IT team keep an eye on network usage. As well as being able to view data flow through the entire network, they can view it by individual user, site or region. This portal also gives them more control, so they can choose which connection to use for each of its business applications. And they can react in real-time to surges in traffic, re-routing data to prevent bandwidth bottlenecks.

While the portal allows the IT team to monitor security threats, the solution also comes with new hardware and software-based firewalls built-in for added protection. “The new, hybrid solution should give us more flexibility and control options, as well as better scaling. It should also help us to keep control over costs at the same time,” explains Thomas Spannbauer, Rexel’s head of IT infrastructure and security