<![CDATA[Agrial, one of France’s leading agricultural and agribusiness cooperatives, has called upon Hub One, the digital technologies operator for businesses, to equip its stores with Wi-Fi terminals to optimise network coverage. This deployment is part of Agrial’s “Phygital 2025” project, aimed at effecting the digital transformation of the group.
The agricultural sector is today in the throes of its second revolution, and is fully immersed in the digital era. Agrial, born in 2000 from the merger of three Lower-Normandy agricultural cooperatives, represents more than 15,000 members covering 19 French departments. To address the expectations and habits of ultra-connected farmers, Agrial has developed, via its site www.agrialpro.com, an e-commerce service operating through the principle of “click & collect”, and proposing professional agricultural products.
Yet the group intends to go still further by way of its “Phygital 2025” project, the goal of which is to improve the experience of its farmer-members and its customers. The first step in this “phygital” strategy consists in deploying Wi-Fi in stores, serving as a foundation for digitisation so as to be able to develop, ultimately, high-value-added services: sales tablets, displays, mobile checkout, selection aid terminals, etc.
In this context, and on the strength of its know-how in the fields of Wi-Fi and retail, Hub One has proposed to the Agrial group a bespoke, end-to-end service including the supply of switches, indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi access points, their insulation in stores and the associated maintenance. Initially, the Hub One solution has been implemented on 15 of the group’s sites, prior to a large-scale deployment across the 250 Agrial stores.
“We were looking for a service provider who was able to understand the challenges of ‘phygitalisation’, and could offer guarantees of quality Wi-Fi coverage. The solution proposed by Hub One, the proximity of its teams, its expertise in professional radio technologies and its know-how in the field of retail were all factors in winning us over. The deployment of an end-to-end Wi-Fi solution is a real asset in successfully fulfilling the overall digital transformation project,” declares Pascal Beuve, Agrial Retail Director.
“As a B-to-B technological operator, we aim to support companies in their digitisation. Taking part in a large-scale ‘phygitalisation’ project such as Agrial’s, and to do so in today’s ultra-connected agricultural world, underlines our desire to be attentive to our clients and to address their concerns as faithfully as possible so as to help them adapt to the changes and challenges on their markets,” says Nicolas Marchal, Sales Engineer at Hub One.]]>