Red River’s Impact: Making the Most of Cisco

New Hampshire is one of 17 control states in the nation where the government directly controls the distribution and regulation of alcoholic beverages, twice named the country’s top control state and lauded for being one of the most progressive, customer-focused and profitable states in the country. The New Hampshire Liquor Commission (NHLC), responsible for the regulation of the sale of alcoholic beverages for the entire state of New Hampshire, has nearly 70 retail store locations statewide that all function under the same sales strategy.  

The Challenge 

The NHLC welcomes more than 12 million customers to its Outlet locations each year and works with thousands of on- and off-premises licensees, brokers, suppliers and business partners in its role to regulate the sale of alcohol in the State of New Hampshire. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the NHLC had to change the way they engaged with their clients to stay safe, wear masks and practice social distancing. In order to meet the demands of their socially distant customers, the commission turned to Red River for an innovation solution to their problem. 

The Solution 

To effectively assist the NHLC with a necessary upgrade, Red River experts deployed Cisco’s Meraki smart cloud-managed IT solutions – high-efficiency wireless networks that can be optimized for a seamless user experience with faster connection speeds, greater user capacity, more coverage and less calls to technical support. By deploying Meraki solutions in collaboration with the NHLC information technology team and the New Hampshire Department of Informational Technology, Red River was able to enhance the service levels to the clients and create new opportunities for increased state revenue by enabling curbside pickup at 20 of the largest NHLC locations.  

“This solution will help the [NHLC] address PCI compliance by deploying all new routers and switches at nearly 70 store locations,” said Amy Shambo, Account Executive for Red River.  

The newly installed equipment supports Software-Defined Access and SD-WAN systems, which will be implemented and used to provide software-defined capabilities for Phase II of the project. With the upgrade, Red River was able to provide an end-to-end, turnkey solution that leverages Cisco and Meraki equipment to maximize flexibility and control while alleviating any maintenance requirements. 

“With this solution the NHLC will gain visibility into the network users, their devices, and their applications.” 

Fast cloud application response times rely not only on a well-designed LAN, but also on the performance of the service provider’s infrastructure, the Wide-area Network (WAN) and the remote Software-as-a-Service application itself. With Meraki wireless solutions, administrators are now able to quickly create access control and application usage policies, optimizing both their experience as an end-user and the NHLC’s network security as a whole. All Cisco Meraki devices are centrally and securely managed from the cloud using a single web-based dashboard, giving administrators complete control over the users, content, and applications on their network. 

With more and more applications becoming web based, it is increasingly important that any devices used for point-of-sale have the capability to customize access for specific applications. Red River’s deployment of Meraki wireless solutions successfully alleviated Wi-Fi congestion, ensuring that the NHLC is now fully equipped to handle the rising demands of new customers, multiple devices and faster data rates.  

Red River’s Certified Meraki Networking Associates (CMNAs) are standing by to empower proactive security, control and collaboration across your network infrastructure. To learn more, contact info@redriver.com