TEM Partnership with Grocery Outlet Leads to Community Outreach & More

December, 2009 - Founded in 1946, Grocery Outlet is a third-generation family run business, recognized as the nation’s largest grocery extreme-value retailer. Headquartered in Berkeley, California, Grocery Outlet currently encompasses 130+ independently operated stores in 6 Western States that offer brand name products at 40% to 60% below traditional retailers. With a growing infrastructure, technology demands, and the need to improve telecom management, Grocery Outlets turned to vCom for assistance in streamlining both their voice and data networks.

Grocery Outlets faced two major challenges: the first was a wide area network strategy to support and interconnect their core locations, in addition to supporting a highly successful Internet marketing campaign strategy.  The second challenge was the need to gain control over numerous monthly bills from disparate carriers for telecom services across multiple offices.

vCom’s Professional Services Team worked with Grocery Outlets’ IT Team on designing and implementing an enhanced network infrastructure for Internet access, to build redundancy and high availability that would support Grocery Outlets' growing Internet business. vCom also worked on designing and implementing a WAN solution linking Grocery Outlets' primary offices.

vCom then worked with Grocery Outlets to create an accurate inventory of their voice services, allowing Grocery Outlets to displace hundreds of costly analog lines with digital circuits.  This provided significant cost savings, helping fund the cost of the new data network.

All data and voice services were transitioned to vCom's single invoice, in lieu of many Bell invoices, and made visible in vManager across all sites. vCom has developed close business relationships with several team members of Grocery Outlet by way of optimizing their network infrastructure. One team member of Grocery Outlet had this to say about the services provided by vCom Solutions:

“ vCom provides several  services that make it worthwhile to do business with them. First, when transitioning circuits they take care of all the dirty work of implementation with the carriers and all of our installs have been pain free.   Second, having web access to a consolidated invoice through vManager, along with the history of invoices, is one of vCom’s best services.  The invoice itself is clear and concise and it gives visibility to what you’re paying for in a way that is not possible with the major carriers.  Finally, their tech support has been superb and it is much easier to work with vCom during a problem than with the carriers.   This is particularly important when several vendors may be involved with a single circuit.  I recommend vCom without hesitation.” - Steve Tuscher, Director of IT, Grocery Outlet

From a business perspective, both vCom and Grocery Outlets have benefited from partnering. As part of vCom’s community outreach endeavors, vCom worked with one of the local Grocery Outlets stores to provide canned foods to the regional Food Bank. Through a generous discount from Grocery Outlets, vCom was able to exceed its Food Drive target for December 2009, doubling its contributions from 2008.

"Our relationship with Grocery Outlets has been a true partnership," said Sameer Hilal, vCom's COO. "We are thankful for their trust in our ability to effectively manage their telecom environment and for their help as we give back to our community."

About Grocery Outlet

Based in Berkeley, California, Grocery Outlet offers extreme bargains on brand name merchandise, with prices often up to 40 to 60% less than conventional retailers. The largest “extreme value” grocer in the U.S., Grocery Outlet has over 135 locations in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon & Washington.

Grocery Outlet’s mission has always been to provide customers a fun place to find extreme values on name brands they trust. Most stores are independently operated by locally based families.

About vCom Solutions

vCom Solutions is revolutionizing the way that multi-site companies manage their telecom environment. Having pioneered and refined Telecom Management as a Service (TMaaS™), vCom is helping Enterprise customers regain control over their expenses, achieve greater visibility, and ultimately save money.

vCom offers a complete suite of cloud-based Telecom Management software tools, complemented by a full portfolio of Professional Services, guiding customers through a complete Telecom Lifecycle-Management (TLM™) process.  That includes Carrier Selection, Procurement, Project Management, Technical Support, Bill Consolidation and Cost Allocation of all communication services.