HP PPS | IT case study | DOVY | HP

Case study
Dovy Keukens brings retail
theatre to life
HP Z230 Workstation performs in showroom
and factory thanks to impressive power
Industry
SME, Retail
Objective
Standardise its workstation estate across
showrooms and factory sites, to deliver
performance and reliability
Approach
Tested several workstation options with long-time
IT partner, Christiaens Computer Service
IT matters
•Ensures an optimal experience by rendering
images of the dream kitchen without delays
•Creates a standard hardware estate across all
sites, linking showroom with design
and production
•Ensures that the new website can cope with
seasonal spikes of up to 1.5 million page
views an hour
Business matters
•Delivers flawless rendering of 3D images,
improving the customer experience
•Create a situation where customers only
have eyes for the image on the screen
and not be distracted by technology
“Our designs are immediately seen on the screen which
helps create a more positive customer experience. This
definitely increases our commercial success.”
– Danny Desmet, IT manager, Dovy Keukens
Reliability and processing power key to a flawless
customer experience
You may buy a new kitchen two or three times in your life.
Before deciding on such a large investment, you want to see
that dream kitchen right in front of you. If not in real life then
on a screen, in three dimensions. Dovy Keukens, Belgium’s
leading kitchen retailer, puts customer dreams into reality
using HP Z230 Workstations.
Case study | Dovy Keukens
Challenge
Bring 3D images to life
In 1980 Donald Muylle and his wife Yvette
Claeys started to create their own dream
kitchen. Muyelle, a cabinet-maker, used
his workshop in an old flax barn in Oekene,
a village between Ghent and Bruges in
Belgium. Family and friends were soon asking
the couple to build their dream kitchen.
These happy customers then brought new
customers and a business was born.
Thirty years on and the company’s
philosophy remains much the same: build
a kitchen of high quality at an affordable
price, eliminate the middlemen and ship
directly from manufacturer to customer.
Production has shifted from the old flax barn.
In 2014 Dovy Keukens opened its newest
factory, a facility in Roeselare covering
35,000sqm. Every day, approximately
20 kitchens leave the plant to be installed
somewhere in Belgium. Dovy produces
approximately 3,500 kitchens each year.
The strength of the business? IT manager
Danny Desmet has been with the
company through two decades:
“We buy all the equipment and raw
materials ourselves, our plant is highly
automated and we have 19 showrooms
in Belgium so we can deliver directly,
without intermediaries, to the customer.”
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Dovy employs approximately 250 people.
Benedikt Vanmarcke is an account manager
in the oldest and largest showroom
in Roeselare: “We attract a wide audience in
our showrooms. Our customers are looking for
a quality kitchen. Our job is to identify where
their interest lies. Modern? Classic? Solid wood
or MDF? What colour? What design best fits
their situation? Then we make a rough sketch
on paper and get to work on the computer.”
This process did not always run smoothly.
Desmet explains: “We take our customers
on a journey. We want them to participate
in the design process in order to arrive at
a photorealistic representation of their
kitchen. Because the choice of materials,
colours and formats is so extensive,
such a sketch requires quite a bit of
processing power of the workstations.”
The rendering was not always accurate
or fast enough to satisfy the more
discerning customers. “Together with our
partner Christiaens Computer Service
of Passendale, we went looking for a
solution to get the 3D images on screen
as fast as possible,” says Desmet.
Case study | Dovy Keukens
Solution
Benefits
Fast hardware ensures optimal experience
“Together with Christiaens we start testing
machines which would best meet our
requirements,” says Desmet. “For the
showrooms we needed 80 machines. For the
factory we wanted identical workstations;
around 20 in total.”
New hardware boosts commercial success
“The role of Christiaens in the choice for
the HP Z230 is not to be underestimated,”
says Desmet. “We know exactly what we
want, and our partner can fill in the pieces.
They know the machines inside and out.
This knowledge is of great value for us.
The choice of HP was already decided from
the beginning. The machines are reliable
workhorses – they have to be, both in the
showroom and factory. You don’t want to lose
customers because rendering the images
takes too long. Nor do you want downtime
due to a failed workstation. Reliability and
performance are key to this investment.”
After extensive testing, Christiaens
recommended the HP Z230 Tower
Workstation. The machines are loaded
with specific software designed especially
for drawing and producing kitchens,
along with Dovy’s CRM software.
“We developed some of the software
in-house. The high demands of the software
require the processing power of at least
four CPUs. Additionally these units have
a substantial 16GB of DDR memory and a
500GB hard drive,” he explains. “It means
it’s now possible to render 3D images so
the customer is not distracted by delays.”
“You don’t want to lose
customers because rendering
the images takes too long.
Nor do you want downtime
due to a failed workstation.
The reliability and
performance of the
HP Workstations is the
key to this investment.”
The HP Workstations provide an invaluable
link between design and production.
Dovy continues to invest in new machinery
and has earned a reputation for efficient,
highly automated production.
Just as important to Dovy is its perception
with customers. “Our designs are immediately
seen on the screen which helps create
a more positive customer experience,”
says Benedikt Vanmarcke. “This definitely
increases our commercial success.”
Learn more at
hp.com/go/workstations
– Danny Desmet, IT manager, Dovy Keukens
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Case study | Dovy Keukens
Customer solution
at a glance
Hardware
•100 HP Z230 Tower Workstations
with Intel® Xeon® E3 CPU
•16GB DDR3
•500GB 7200 RPM SATA
•NVIDIA Quadro K600
•14-1 HP Media Card Reader
•HP USB keyboard
•HP USB Laser Mouse
•HP Display Port
HP services
•HP 3 Year Next Business Day Onsite
Our solution partners
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4AA5-5046EEW, January 2015