Premier US Discount Retailer Trusts AirLink for Dual-Cellular Connection

On average, 99 Cent Only Stores generates daily sales of $5 million—50 per cent of sales are completed using electronic transactions, including Credit, Debit, EBT and Gift cards. In one hour, 99 Cent Only Stores sells approximately $425,000 worth of product across all stores—$225,000 purchased via electronic transactions. 

For this reason, 99 Cents Only Stores requires highly robust and reliable point-of-sales (POS) connectivity to support the high volume of electronic transactions, and avoid large opportunity costs in the event of a network failure. “We estimate that we lose up to $500-600 in electronic sales per store for every hour that our system is down,” says Sandeep Chawla, VP Information Technology (IT) Operations and Architecture, 99 Cents Only Stores. “This does not include non-financial losses such as brand reputation and customer loyalty. Customers will leave our store and go elsewhere if they have to wait longer than a few minutes to purchase goods, therefore it is critical that we have reliable POS connectivity at least 99.95 per cent of the time 12/7/365.”

At present, 99 Cents Only Stores uses wireless connectivity for failover purposes in 80 per cent of its stores.