Beacon Retail standardises IT across 8 stores and eliminates POS downtime with Optimyze
Multi-site homewares retailer Beacon Retail was experiencing recurring POS outages and inconsistent IT standards across its eight Auckland stores — costing revenue and frustrating both staff and customers.
0
POS outages in 12 months
8
Stores standardised on one platform
PCI
DSS compliance achieved
The challenge
POS outages, inconsistent store IT, and no central visibility
Beacon Retail operates eight homewares stores across the Auckland region, each supported by a different mix of local IT configurations that had evolved independently over the years. There was no centralised management, no consistent networking standard, and no proactive monitoring — meaning store managers were the first to know about IT problems, usually when the POS had already gone down.
POS outages were occurring at least twice per month across the store network, with each incident costing an average of two hours of trading disruption. A payment security review had also flagged PCI-DSS compliance gaps that needed to be addressed before the next audit.
- POS outages averaging twice monthly across the store estate
- Each outage costing 2+ hours of trading disruption
- No centralised IT management or monitoring across stores
- Inconsistent network configurations and security standards
- PCI-DSS compliance gaps identified ahead of audit
The solution
Standardised networking, centralised monitoring, and PCI-DSS compliance across all 8 stores
Optimyze conducted a site survey across all eight stores, documenting the existing network infrastructure and identifying the root causes of recurring POS outages — primarily consumer-grade networking equipment and internet connections without failover. A standardised store IT stack was designed and deployed across all locations over an eight-week period, with no store closed for more than four hours during any installation.
Payment network segmentation was implemented to isolate EFTPOS and POS traffic from other store systems, addressing the PCI-DSS compliance gaps. Centralised monitoring now gives the Optimyze team full visibility across all stores, with automated alerting for any connectivity issues before they cause trading disruption.
- Enterprise-grade Fortinet networking deployed across all 8 stores
- 4G failover internet connections at every location
- Payment network segmentation for PCI-DSS compliance
- Centralised monitoring with real-time alerts for all store IT
- Standardised POS infrastructure with remote management capability
- SentinelOne endpoint protection on all store and back-office devices
- Staff IT support helpdesk with 1-hour response SLA for store issues
"We used to budget for POS downtime as a cost of doing business. Since Optimyze standardised our stores, we haven't had a single outage in over a year. That's transformed how we think about peak trading periods."
The results
Zero outages, full compliance, and a store estate that just works
Zero POS outages
Not a single point-of-sale outage across all eight stores in the 12 months following deployment — eliminating an ongoing cost of revenue loss.
PCI-DSS compliant
All stores now meet PCI-DSS requirements for payment card data security — satisfying the audit requirements and reducing the business's liability exposure.
One platform, 8 stores
A standardised, centrally managed IT estate across all locations — giving leadership visibility and control they'd never had before.
Ready to keep every store trading?
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