STARK Building Materials is the largest group of builder’s merchants in Europe, operating in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria and now the UK. STARK Group comprises 14 brands, including one of the UK’s leading builders’ merchants, Jewson.
STARK has over 600 dedicated builders merchant branches and distribution centres and is one of the UK’s largest retailers and distributors of building and construction materials.
The Challenge
As STARK Group reached an important milestone in its growth strategy in 2022, it signed an agreement to acquire Saint-Gobain Building Distribution Ltd. Upon signing over 600 branches, STARK Group needed to move its entire IT infrastructure and employee devices from Saint-Gobain’s network to its own network.
There was a tight deadline for the project as STARK had to complete service transfers within a year. The scope of the project involved transferring all IT across 608 sites, 10 offices, and over 8,000 employees.
Alongside time restrictions and the vast scope of the project, there was an added challenge to the project and that was working with a third-party supplier of STARK’s network. One of the challenges was coordinating with all parties to handle the network elements, including taking STARK’s site network connection out of Saint-Gobain’s network, reconfiguring it and bring it back into the STARK network.
The Solution
Stark and TSG along with the network provider collectively planned and executed the rollout of the new IT systems, coordinating with each other to ensure all parties were up to date and were giving daily updates on the progress. The project involved building a new network, issuing new devices, and physically visiting every site to install these devices.
The project was split into six months of preparatory work and six months of on-site work by TSG’s consultants across all of STARK’s branches.
The Results
Together, STARK, and TSG were able to finish the project two weeks early having migrated 13 brands, 608 branches, 10 offices, 8,591 employees, and built and delivered over 7,000 devices.
The collaboration between businesses allowed STARK Group to experience major benefits, including:
- Early project completion: The project was completed two weeks ahead of schedule, with all the branches successfully transferred to the new network and devices. This meant STARK did not face any penalties.
- Widespread deployments: 8,591 employees moved from Saint-Gobain to STARK, and over 7,000 devices were built and handed out. Alongside widespread deployment, TSG also provided training and support to the engineers and the branch staff.
- Operating independence: The project enabled STARK to operate independently from Saint-Gobain and to improve its IT performance and security. STARK Group can now continue its growth knowing it has control of its own network.
- Collaboration across three businesses: The project also highlighted the collaboration and professionalism of all parties. The three teams came together to deliver a successful project.
The project to separate the STARK UK business from Saint-Gobain was incredibly demanding and required a huge amount of coordination to complete on schedule. When we needed to get engineers to visit all of our sites, we immediately reached out to TSG, given our previous experiences of their successful delivery of similar-sized projects. Throughout the rollout, we were kept informed, and the dedication and flexibility of their engineering team was remarkable. Our branch colleagues really appreciated the time taken to install, set up and explain their new hardware – the engineers went the extra mile to make this project a success.
Tom Veale, IT Services Director - STARK UK
