Proximus NXT and Auchan Luxembourg: Digital, Security and Mobility at the heart of a tailor-made partnership

“It all started in 2011 with a rather trivial need,” recalls Arnaud Pierrot, CIO of Auchan Retail Luxembourg. “We had a virtual machine that needed to be hosted for our after-sales service. Proximus NXT then presented its hosting offer, its service centre, and its Tier IV data centres. This is how we became the first within the Auchan Group to migrate to infrastructure of this level of security. At that time, Auchan’s IT was still highly centralised. We were only using corporate solutions hosted either locally on AS/400 systems or by the Group in France.”

When IT becomes a strategic lever

The years went by without major changes until 2015, a year of group reorganisation that led to the creation of Auchan Corporate and a new structure in which each country gained greater autonomy. “Until then, Luxembourg was heavily dependent on France in terms of IT but, given the new projects that were starting to materialise – the opening of a second hypermarket in Differdange and the expansion of our activities at Cloche d’Or – it became obvious that we needed to free ourselves from this dependency, which was limiting our expansion, and that the time had come to make Luxembourg a true Auchan country,” says Arnaud Pierrot.

“In the retail sector,” he explains, “IT was long seen as a simple support tool. However, during the 2000s, information systems gradually became more strategic. The evolution of customer relationships, digital, phygital – the blending of physical and digital worlds – brought major changes for both the Group and Auchan Luxembourg. Since then, our vision of customer relationships has continued to evolve through digital tools, smartphones, tablets, and the new solutions we deploy in our stores to interact directly with customers.”

“For this, IT must be at the heart of our business and be able to meet all expectations,” adds Djamel Djahmi, IT Support Manager at Auchan Retail Luxembourg. “We can no longer accept that a night shift does not run properly or that a system becomes unavailable due to a data centre issue. The transformation of our business model and the high-quality relationship we want to maintain with our customers require robust, reliable IT and a high level of availability,” he explains.

Zero-defect service quality

“These requirements drove our choice of Proximus NXT and its data centre hosting solutions,” Arnaud Pierrot explains. “Today, one of the key benefits of this decision is the security provided by Proximus NXT with its two redundant data centres. Since we started using Proximus NXT services, we have experienced zero downtime in system availability. That is important today, and it will be even more important tomorrow.”

He continues: “From 2015 onwards, we knew we had to complete the transformation of our IT infrastructure in time for the opening of our new hypermarket in Differdange, planned for 2018. We started from a highly centralised situation, mainly managed from France. We therefore defined an action plan, the first step of which was to assess the existing infrastructure.”

“Once this assessment was completed,” adds Djamel Djahmi, “we decided to redesign our network infrastructure. We launched a tender, and Proximus NXT won it mainly because of the wide range of services it could offer us. Beyond hosting capabilities and technical expertise, Proximus NXT also brings a major strength: integration capability. From an integration project entrusted to it, Proximus NXT is able to deliver a solution tailored to our specific needs, built from its full service catalogue and developed for us by various specialised teams.”

A partner able to adapt

“To meet our needs,” he says, “Proximus NXT was able to adapt its services to the specificities of the retail sector. Other players in Luxembourg offer a high level of quality, but they mainly serve the banking, insurance or European institutional sectors. Very few are willing to take retail constraints into account.”

“When we started working with Proximus NXT, a dedicated project manager was assigned to us,” says Arnaud Pierrot. “He got to know us, learned our business, and today plays a strategic role in our relationship with Proximus NXT. He understands our model and can provide highly relevant advice because he bridges the gap between Proximus NXT’s vast capabilities and our small IT team, which needs such a partner to meet all our needs.”

“At that point, our project became a true transformation programme,” he notes. “Proximus NXT became a real partner, and its project manager became a full member of Auchan Luxembourg’s IT team, working almost daily with it. Today, we consistently have 4 to 5 Proximus NXT staff members within our project team, and since the programme started in 2015, nearly a hundred have been involved, directly or indirectly, in Auchan Luxembourg’s IT transformation.”

Once the new network infrastructure was implemented, Proximus NXT and Auchan Luxembourg teams worked closely together on connectivity, mobility, and security phases of the transformation programme.

With the Smart Birdie mobility project implemented with Proximus NXT’s help, all Auchan employees were equipped with smartphones that, in addition to telephony services, provide access to a wide range of solutions and applications, some hosted in Proximus NXT data centres. “To ensure an optimal customer experience, it is essential that in-store employees have the right information at the right time,” the CIO recalls. “Beyond improving service for end customers, these technologies also make life easier for internal users.”

Virtualising to secure

“The office IT phase of the plan was an important step forward in workstation security,” explains Djamel Djahmi. “Until the 2000s, we mainly used passive terminals connected to AS/400 systems, which greatly limited user autonomy. We then opened up systems by deploying PC networks.”

“2018 was a special year for Auchan,” Arnaud Pierrot recalls, “as after 20 years in Luxembourg we opened a second hypermarket in Differdange. We also relied on Proximus NXT for this project and entrusted it with infrastructure and network implementation. We further worked on securing the site using an advanced model we call the airport model, a first for Auchan Group stores, highlighted by a recent audit,” he stresses.

“In terms of hosting,” adds Djamel Djahmi, “we have three options: public cloud services offered by Proximus NXT such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services, the company’s private cloud, and the Auchan Group corporate cloud. We can combine all three depending on the applications. Some legacy systems cannot be migrated to the public cloud and will move to the private cloud until they are replaced.”

Facing new challenges together

Auchan Luxembourg is now entering the final phase of its transformation programme. Major milestones have been achieved: network upgrading, reliability improvements, segmentation and security, better application access, mobility enablement, checkout virtualisation, and more. Based on these achievements, tested mainly during the opening of the new Differdange hypermarket, the retailer is now ready to complete the transformation of its existing sites with no impact on customers or users.

“If we were able to meet deadlines for this project,” says Arnaud Pierrot, “it is thanks to Proximus NXT engineers and the flexibility they provided. We were able to mobilise the necessary resources at the right time as needs emerged, right up to the opening. At that moment, Proximus NXT teams demonstrated their responsiveness and willingness to work with us. From then on, we realised we had moved beyond a simple client–supplier relationship and that a strong synergy had developed between Proximus NXT, the Auchan teams, and even some third-party partners. New challenges are ahead for Auchan Luxembourg, and Proximus NXT clearly has a role to play alongside us in meeting them,” he concludes.