Connectivity across continents: How Camilla manages their US locations from Australia with Meter

Background

Camilla is an Australian-based boutique chain that’s rapidly expanding their U.S. presence. This expansion created a challenge for the company’s Sydney, Australia-based Head of IT Infrastructure and Operations, Danial Sacco. This would be complex to add just one store, but Camilla had plans to expand coast to coast with locations in California, New York, and Florida.

Daniel set out to ensure Camilla’s U.S. customers received the same high level of customer service and support that their Australian base was accustomed to. First, he looked for ways to guarantee these new locations had the same strong WiFi for the fleet of iPads Camilla's in-store staff use to provide research and payment services. Ideally, Daniel wanted a partner who could take on support for the in-store networks in the U.S. so his team in Australia could avoid being awakened at 2:00 AM with support calls.

These late-night support calls for dropped iPad connections weren’t scalable, but Daniel also knew that retail presents a very particular set of network and ISP challenges, so when he found Meter he was instantly intrigued.

Meter for retail: Enterprise hardware and 24/7 support

Standardization is especially important, given that Camilla staff rely on iPads to function as their primary POS devices, as well as to help shoppers compare colors and check on backstock for high-demand items. This heavy reliance on mobile devices means that in-store Wi-Fi and redundant network backups were top priorities for Daniel. “We want our customer experience to be unrestricted,” Daniel tells us. “So if a customer is trying on clothes, one of our boutique staff can come to them in the changing area with an iPad to instantly check stock levels.”

Additionally, network security is key for retail operations. When Daniel arrived, the locations in the U.S. were running on consumer-grade routers. These had no VLAN segmentation, dynamic firewall policies, or visibility into traffic—creating unnecessary risk for a network in public locations like shopping centers.

With his triple focus of on-site support, enterprise-level security, and the ability to monitor from a distance, Daniel was excited about partnering with Meter. Daniel chose Meter because the platform was purpose-built for distributed retail, with zero-touch deployments, LTE backup, and remote monitoring already integrated. Subsequently, he knew he could maintain Camilla’s top-tier customer service by leveraging Meter’s solution.

When it came to understanding that he needed to be able to remotely manage every network from Sydney through a single dashboard, for Daniel, Meter’s design just made sense. Given the diverse markets Camilla is entering across the U.S., Daniel wasn’t keen on having to find different subcontractors for every region. By choosing Meter, he gets an international team supporting Camilla, no matter where they open next.

Since having proverbial boots on the ground isn’t exactly easy when it involves flying from Australia to the U.S. anytime there’s an issue, Daniel loves that no matter which location is having trouble, Meter’s support team is there for them, even when he’s at home asleep.

“Now, when issues happen overnight, Meter’s monitoring platform alerts its support team and resolves them, often before Camilla staff even notice. I wake up to postmortems, not support tickets.” Daniel says. “I can rest easy knowing that your team is taking the steps necessary to rectify whatever the situation is before I’m even in the office.”

By outsourcing his North America network needs to Meter, Daniel has been able to shift his and his in-office team’s focus to bigger projects that impact the whole company. “I’ve been working a lot on cybersecurity auditing for the company as a whole.” He continues, “Australia has compliance laws around social security that mean I have to ensure our systems are all up to that standard so we can maintain our certifications.”

He’s also involved in budgeting for multiple other projects, so a lot of his time is spent collaborating with project teams around building out new boutiques, maintaining day-to-day operations at headquarters, and handling management duties for the Australia help desk team. Documentation and managing assets rounds out how Daniel uses his time now that he’s not concerned about the U.S. expansion needing his attention—he knows Meter will reach out if he’s needed.

Being in tech for two decades has left Daniel with an expert’s eye for what makes tech easy to use, but watching even a non-technical employee walk through the dashboard showed him how intuitive Meter’s interface truly is. “It’s so easy to navigate, I can give a task to the newest member of the team and know they won’t have any problem finding the right place to set a static IP or update a port setting.”

For Daniel and Camilla, it all boiled down to this: